The history of lynching in the United States ranks as one of the most horrific, shameful episodes in American history. In Lynch Law, the first serious investigation of lynching published in 1905, James E. Cutler states that ôlynching is a criminal practice which is peculiar to the United States.ö The lynching of African Americans began during the aftermath of the Civil War and continued well into the 20th Century, most often with little or no opposition from government agencies. Lynching was more than brutal violence wrought on one group of American citizens by another; it was also a means of social control. The argument of this paper is that lynching was not just an act of hatred and rage, but a deliberate and conscious attempt to control behavior, and as such it perpetuated a racist caste system in the United States.
The term lynching came into use in the United States in 1790 when a Colonel Charles Lynch, a Virginia landowner, held illegal trials of local suspected lawbreakers who were white for the most part. He whipped the accused while they were tied to a tree. Lynch, acting as judge, jury and executioner, used lynching to maintain law and order before formal courts were established. The same was true in the Old West where horse thieves, actual or suspected and mostly white, were lynched, usually by hanging. These lynchings were done outside the legal system when no system existed. This was not true, however, in the lynching of African Americans because a functioning legal system did exist at every level of government. The lynching of African Americans was particularly brutal and often took place in front of an ôaudience,ö a crowd of onlookers who cheered on the lynchers. Those who were being lynched were not just hung. They were most often tortured, burned, whipped, beaten, shot, dismembered and castrated.
Although lynching was virtually carried out in the South where white supremacists ruled, the North ...