Lynching

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

2026 Editor's Note: This page uses language about race that was commonplace when the book was published and is offensive by today's standards. The text has been left exactly as it was printed, rather than cut or softened, so that the historical record — including how ordinary such language once was — is preserved. (Ed: ET 2026-07-22) a term used in the United States, meaning the punishment offenders of death inflicted on supposed , without any trial of by a mob of people the accused ever resorted to in lynching was hardly the Un United States until after the Civil War, except in the extreme frontier sec tions. With the emancipation of the negroes and the "Reconstruction" period, the Ku-Klux-Klan began a systematic terrorizing of the negro population. It that became a written law in the South no negro accused of the rape of a white woman should be allowed the privilege of a trial. Soon lynchings spread to the and were no longer North and West, confined to negroes accused of rape. In the thirty years from 1885-1915 over 3,500 people, almost all negroes, were thus lawlessly put to death. In their lawless acts few members of the mob ever suffer, as the case against them must be tried in the district where the local officers are sympathetic with the lynching. Many lawyers are advocating making lynching an ofrs and public men fense against Federal law and thus make punishment for participation in it much more certain. yers a