The Lynch Law: From Revolutionary Frontier Justice to Racial Terror
The term “Lynch Law” (later “lynching”) occupies a dark and complex place in American history. Its origins lie in the patriotic zeal and wartime exigencies...
Category : History
Charles Lynch
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Charles Lynch was a Virginia planter, justice of the peace, politician, and militia colonel whose extrajudicial actions during the American Revolutionary War originated the term...
Cecil J. Williams
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Cecil J. Williams (born November 26, 1937) is an acclaimed American photographer, publisher, author, inventor, and civil rights documentarian from Orangeburg, South Carolina. He is...
George Meadows: Lynched in Jefferson County, Alabama, After a Flawed Accusation
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George Meadows, an African American man and recent arrival to the Pratt Mines area in Jefferson County, Alabama, was lynched by a mob of white...
The East St. Louis Riots (Massacre) of 1917
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One of the Bloodiest Episodes of Racial Violence in American History The East St. Louis riots, often referred to as the East St. Louis massacre,...
Lynch Mobs: Extrajudicial Violence, Racial Terror, & Mob Justice Across History
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A lynch mob refers to a group of people who take the law into their own hands to punish, often lethally, an individual accused (rightly...
Nine Black Men Lynched in One Day: The 1908 Sabine County Massacre
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On June 22, 1908, a white mob in Sabine County, Texas, carried out one of the most brutal episodes of racial violence in the state’s...
Black Man Lynched in Alabama for Failing to Call a White Man “Mr.”
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On June 21, 1940, in Luverne, Alabama, a trivial act of speech cost 26-year-old Jesse Thornton his life. Thornton, a Black resident of the small...
Cotton Mather
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Cotton Mather (February 12, 1663 – February 13/15, 1728) was a prominent Puritan minister, prolific author, and one of the most influential intellectual figures in...
Onesimus
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Onesimus (late 1600s–early 1700s) was an enslaved West African man whose knowledge of variolation (an early form of inoculation against smallpox) helped save hundreds of lives...