Lynchings were rituals of collective violence that served as highly effective tools to reinforce the institution and philosophy of white racial superiority. [70]

After the U.S. Civil War, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was enforced by the Federal Government upon Southern states, in effect removing the preferred means for implementing racial hierarchy, but leaving largely intact the underlying premise for it. That is, the war ended slavery, but the cultural belief in white superiority was if anything galvanized by this defeat. Reconstruction, the Federal effort to redress this cultural norm, was undertaken without resolve, became increasingly politically fragmented, and ultimately proved to be short-lived.

Through lynching, Southern white communities asserted their racial dominance over the region's political and economic resources -- a dominance achieved first through slavery would now be restored through blood and terror. [30]

After Reconstruction, an era of "second slavery" was devised by Southern whites through state and local laws and practices such as convict leasing, in which criminal and commercial structures were co-opted to support the white hierarchy. [24] Lynching in this context was not a form of frontier justice or even vigilantism, rather a terrorism bred in the culture. Lynching served Southern white culture as the structural-functional equivalent of slavery.

The practice of terrorizing an entire African American community after lynching one alleged "wrongdoer" demonstrates that Southern lynching during this era was not to attain "popular justice" or retaliation for crime. Rather, these lynchings were designed for broad impact -- to send a message of domination, to instill fear, and sometimes to drive African Americans from the community altogether. [39]

The resulting legacy of terror imprinted itself on black and white culture. Lynching ended not so much out of a rejection of its immorality, as out of concern for optics: it didn't play well publicly, and so yet another functional equivalent evolved as lynching became increasingly unavailable. The substitute was a peculiar variant of mass incarceration & capital punishment, a social practice defined in terms of criminality, but employed with an acute racial bias.

The lynching era left thousands dead; it significantly marginalized black people in the country's political, economic, and social systems; and it fueled a massive migration of black refugees out of the South. In addition, lynching -- and other forms of racial terrorism -- inflicted deep traumatic and psychological wounds on survivors, witnesses, family members, and the entire African American community. Whites who participated in or witnessed gruesome lynchings and socialized their children in this culture of violence also were psychologically damaged. [62]

U.S. culture remains linked to violence through its history of racial hierarchy and terror. That cultural bedrock will remain corrosive until addressed, which must be done on a social level through national conversation.

The administration of criminal justice in particular is tangled with the history of lynching in profound and important ways that continue to contaminate the integrity and fairness of the justice system. [4]

EJI proposes restorative justice via a vague commitment to truth & reconciliation; the specific ideas mentioned here concern monuments & memorials as a means of establishing formal remembrance & recognition. Presumably more is envisioned along these lines, but what that might be, is not spelled out here.

Meaningful public accountability is critical to bring the cycle of violence to a close. [64]

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A monograph by the Equal Justice Initiative, the second of "a series of reports that examines the trajectory of American [U.S.] history from slavery to mass incarceration". [4] It provides an admirably concise summary of Reconstruction and the origins of lynching in the failures of Reconstruction, hinting that the modern legacy of lynching lies with capital punishment. Presumably a forthcoming monograph will address that legacy in greater detail, just as an earlier monograph on slavery addressed the origins of the U.S. Civil War.

EJI distinguishes "racial terror lynchings" (or "violent and public acts of torture ... largely tolerated by state and federal officials") from "hangings and mob violence that followed from some trial process or that were committed against non-minorities without the threat of terror". Terror lynchings occurred between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950 (peaking between 1880 and 1940), and took 3,959 lives, at least 700 more than previously documented. The monograph also limited its reportage to 12 "most active lynching states" in the U.S.: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. [4-5] A narrow definition, with the lynching's public nature serving to meet the criterion of "threat of terror": at times lynchings were reported in advance in newspapers, public spectacle lynchings the most notorious of these.

Playing "lynching" was so popular among Southern white children that the game was named "Salisbury", presumably after a series of lynchings in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1902 and 1906 that included a fifteen-year-old black child among the victims. [67]

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NYT mapped the lynching episodes online, here.

Non-lynching episodes of "collective punishment" (mob violence, riots, and pogroms) are mapped online in a project led by Liam Hogan, here. ( )