Lynching as Religious Ritual in the Jim Crow South
Theological Underpinnings Donald G. Mathews, in his influential essay “The Southern Rite of Human Sacrifice” and later work such as At the Altar of Lynching (on...
Category : Lynchings
The Lynching of Mary Turner
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The lynching of Mary Turner in 1918 in Lowndes County, Georgia, stands as one of the most horrific episodes of racial violence in American history....
Considering History: The Role of Women in the Lynching Epidemic
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On February 14, Senator Kamala Harris introduced legislation into the Senate that would for the first time in American history make lynching a federal crime....
The Lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco: The “Waco Horror” of 1916
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On May 15, 1916, in Waco, Texas, a 17-year-old African American farmhand named Jesse Washington was brutally lynched by a white mob in front of...
The Lynching of Joel Woodson
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Joel Woodson of Omaha, Nebraska was lynched by a mob in Green River, Wyoming on December 10, 1918, at the Union Pacific Railroad yard. He...
The Lynching of Leo Frank
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In 1913, Leo Frank was convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee of the Atlanta pencil factory that Frank managed. After Georgia’s governor commuted...
The Lynching of Will Cato & Paul Reed
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A Dark Chapter in Georgia’s Racial History In August 1904, the small town of Statesboro, Georgia, became the epicenter of one of the era’s most...
The lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, 1930
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On a hot August night in 1930, a crowd gathered in front of an Indiana jail — men, women, and children shouting and jeering, demanding...
Emmett Till
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Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois, to Mamie Carthan Till and Louis Till. Growing up on the South Side...
Strange Fruit
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Billie Holiday’s 1939 song about racist lynchings stunned audiences and redefined popular music. In an extract from 33 Revolutions Per Minute, his history of protest...