Lynching was used as a way to reinforce and maintain social, political, and economic control over black people (in particular) in the U.S. I have written a lot about lynching as an extra-judicial means of racial oppression on this blog. You can find some of those thoughts here.

Monday was Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s birthday. In honor of that, I wanted to reprint an excerpt from an article in the New York Independent (May 16, 1901) titled “Lynching and the Excuse for It.” In the excerpt below, Wells-Barnett makes the case that retaliation for rape is not the underlying reason why so many black people were being lynched in the South:

…If the Southern citizens lynch Negroes because “that is the only successful method of dealing with a certain class of crimes,” then that class of crimes should be shown unmistakably by this record. Now consider the record.

It would be supposed that the record would show that all, or nearly all, lynchings were caused by outrageous assaults upon women; certainly that this particular offense would outnumber all other causes for putting human beings to death without a trial by jury and the other safeguards of our Constitution and laws.

But the record makes no such disclosure. Instead, it shows that five women have been lynched, put to death with unspeakable savagery during the past five years. They certainly were not under the ban of the outlawing crime. It shows that men, not a few, but hundreds, have been lynched for misdemeanors, while others have suffered death for no offense known to the law, the causes assigned being “mistaken identity,” “insult,” “bad reputation,” “unpopularity,” “violating contract,” “running quarantine,” “giving evidence,” “frightening children by shooting at rabbits,” etc. Then, strangest of all, the record shows that the sum total of lynchings for these offenses — not crimes — and for the alleged offenses which are only misdemeanors, greatly exceeds the lynchings for the very crime universally declared to be the cause of lynching.

…Instead of being the sole cause of lynching, the crime upon which lynchers build their defense furnishes the least victims for the mob. In 1896 less than thirty-nine per cent of the Negroes lynched were charged with this crime; in 1897, less than eighteen per cent; in 1899, less than sixteen per cent; in 1899, less than fourteen per cent; and in 1900, less than fifteen per cent, were so charged.

Finally, it is important to note, as Wells does, that women were also the victims of lynching. The following is a list of the names of women who were lynched in the U.S between 1886 and 1957.