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===United States=== {{Main|Lynching in the United States|Lynching of American Jews|List of lynching victims in the United States}} [[File:Lynching-of-will-james.jpg|thumb|The lynching of [[African Americans|African American]] [[William "Froggie" James]] in [[Cairo, Illinois]], on November 11, 1909. A crowd of thousands watched the lynching.<ref>{{cite book |title=Black Woman Reformer: Ida B. Wells, Lynching, & Transatlantic Activism |url=https://archive.org/details/blackwomanreform0000silk |url-access=registration |date=2015 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/blackwomanreform0000silk/page/n18 1]|isbn=9780820345574 }}</ref>]] [[Image:duluth-lynching-postcard.jpg|right|thumb|[[Lynching postcard|Postcard]] of the [[Duluth lynchings|1920 Duluth, Minnesota lynchings]]. Two of the Black victims are still hanging while the third is on the ground.<ref name="Moyers">Moyers, Bill. [https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html "Legacy of Lynching"]. PBS. Retrieved July 28, 2016</ref>]] Lynchings took place in the United States both before and after the [[American Civil War]], most commonly in Southern states and Western frontier settlements and most frequently in the late 19th century. They were often performed by self-appointed commissions, [[Ochlocracy|mobs]], or [[vigilantes]] as a form of punishment for presumed criminal offenses.<ref>The Guardian, 'Jim Crow lynchings more widespread than previously thought', Lauren Gambino, February 10, 2015</ref> From 1883 to 1941 there were 4,467 victims of lynching. Of these, 4,027 were male, and 99 female. 341 were of unknown sex but are assumed to be likely male. In terms of ethnicity, 3,265 were black, 1,082 were white, 71 were Mexican or of Mexican descent, 38 were Native American, ten were Chinese, and one was Japanese.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Seguin|first1=Charles|last2=Rigby|first2=David|date=2019|title=National Crimes: A New National Data Set of Lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941|journal=Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World|volume=5|doi=10.1177/2378023119841780|s2cid=164388036|issn=2378-0231|doi-access=free}}</ref> At the first recorded lynching, in [[St. Louis, Missouri|St. Louis]] in 1835, a Black man named McIntosh who killed a deputy sheriff while being taken to jail was captured, chained to a tree, and burned to death on a corner lot downtown in front of a crowd of over 1,000 people.<ref>William Hyde and Howard L. Conrad (eds.), [https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofhi04hyde ''Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis: A Compendium of History and Biography for Ready Reference: Volume 4.''] New York: Southern History Company, 1899; pg. 1913.</ref> Universal suffrage indicated the beginning of mass lynching across southern United States. The rise to mobs of outrage such as the "red shirt"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wells |first=Ida B |title=Lynch Law In America |date=1900 |pages=71β72}}</ref> bands began to appear in many southern states at the time of when voting became a right for black men, a key historical turn of events that gave uprise to lynching. Initially intended as scare tactics, this outrage continues to grow more and more violent to the point of men being take from their homes, beaten, exiled, and even assassinated. <!--Please do not add examples to this section. Instead add them to the main page 'Lynching in United States'--> Mob violence arose as a means of enforcing [[White supremacy]]<ref name="gibson">{{cite web|first=Robert A.|last=Gibson|title=The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States, 1880β1950|url=https://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html|access-date=July 26, 2010|publisher=Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute}}</ref> and frequently verged on systematic political terrorism. After the American Civil War, secret white supremacist terrorist groups such as the [[Ku Klux Klan]], previously known as the "red-shirt bands", instigated extrajudicial assaults and killings due to a perceived loss of white power in America.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wells |first=Ida |title=Lynch Law in America |date=1900 |pages=71β72}}</ref><ref name="New South 1993">{{cite book|last=Brundage|first=W. Fitzhugh|url=https://archive.org/details/lynchinginnewsou0000brun|title=Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880β1930|publisher=University of Illinois Press|year=1993|isbn=0-252-06345-7|location=Urbana|url-access=registration}}</ref><ref name="Barry A. Crouch 1868">{{cite journal|last=Crouch|first=Barry A.|year=1984|title=A Spirit of Lawlessness: White violence, Texas Blacks, 1865β1868|journal=Journal of Social History|volume=18|issue=2|pages=217β226|doi=10.1353/jsh/18.2.217|jstor=3787285}}</ref><ref name="Foner1988p119-123">{{cite book|last=Foner|first=Eric|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780060158514/page/119|title=Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863β1877|publisher=Harper & Row|year=1988|isbn=0-06-015851-4|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780060158514/page/119 119β123]|url-access=registration}}</ref><ref name="J.C.A. Stagg 1871">{{cite journal|last=Stagg|first=J. C. A.|year=1974|title=The Problem of Klan Violence: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1868β1871|journal=Journal of American Studies|volume=8|issue=3|pages=303β318|doi=10.1017/S0021875800015905}}</ref> Mobs usually alleged crimes for which they lynched Black people in order to instill fear. In the late 19th century, however, journalist [[Ida B. Wells]] showed that many presumed crimes were either exaggerated or had not even occurred.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Lynching|encyclopedia=[[MSN Encarta]]|url=http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761576853/Lynching.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091028112646/http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761576853/Lynching.html|archive-date=October 28, 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref> The magnitude of the extralegal violence which occurred during election campaigns, to prevent blacks from voting, reached epidemic proportions.<ref name="New South 1993" /><ref name="Barry A. Crouch 1868" /><ref name="Foner1988p119-123" /><ref name="J.C.A. Stagg 1871" /> The [[ideology]] behind lynching was directly connected to the denial of political and social equality, as stated forthrightly in 1900 by United States Senator and former governor of South Carolina [[Benjamin Tillman]]: {{blockquote|We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him.<ref name="herbert">{{cite news |first=Bob |last=Herbert |author-link=Bob Herbert |title=The Blight That Is Still With Us |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/opinion/22herbert.html?hp |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=January 22, 2008|access-date=January 22, 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/55/|title='Their Own Hotheadedness': Senator Benjamin R. 'Pitchfork Ben' Tillman Justifies Violence Against Southern Blacks|website=History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web|publisher=George Mason University|access-date=September 3, 2020}}</ref>}} Members of mobs that participated in lynchings often took photographs of what they had done to their victims. Souvenir taking, such as the taking of pieces of rope, clothing, branches and sometimes [[Human trophy collecting|body parts]] was not uncommon. Some of those photographs were published and sold as [[lynching postcard|postcards]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Tharoor|first=Ishaan |date=September 27, 2016 |title= U.S. owes black people reparations for a history of 'racial terrorism,' says U.N. panel|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/27/u-s-owes-black-people-reparations-for-a-history-of-racial-terrorism-says-u-n-panel/|newspaper= [[The Washington Post]]|access-date=May 1, 2017|quote="Lynching was a form of racial terrorism that has contributed to a legacy of racial inequality that the United States must address. Thousands of people of African descent were killed in violent public acts of racial control and domination and the perpetrators were never held accountable." }}</ref><ref>{{cite report|publisher=[[Equal Justice Initiative]]|title=Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror|year=2017|location=Montgomery, Alabama|url=https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/|page=14|edition=3rd|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180510151602/https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/|archive-date=May 10, 2018|quote=Public spectacle lynchings were those in which large crowds of white people, often numbering in the thousands, gathered to witness pre-planned, heinous killings that featured prolonged torture, mutilation, dismemberment, and/or burning of the victim. Many were carnival-like events, with vendors selling food, printers producing postcards featuring photographs of the lynching and corpse, and the victim's body parts collected as souvenirs.}}</ref> <!--Please do not add examples to this section. Instead add them to 'Lynching in the United States'--> ====Anti-lynching legislation and the civil rights movement==== The [[Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill]] was first introduced to the [[United States Congress]] in 1918 by [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] Congressman [[Leonidas C. Dyer]] of [[St. Louis, Missouri]]. The bill was passed by the [[United States House of Representatives]] in 1922, and in the same year it was given a favorable report by the [[United States Senate]] Committee. Its passage was blocked by White Democratic senators from the [[Solid South]], the only representatives elected since the southern states [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|had disenfranchised African Americans]] around the start of the 20th century.<ref>[https://ssrn.com/abstract=224731 Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", ''Constitutional Commentary'', Vol. 17, 2000]. Accessed March 10, 2008.</ref> The Dyer Bill influenced later anti-lynching legislation, including the [[Costigan-Wagner Bill]], which was also defeated in the US Senate.<ref>Zangrando, NAACP Crusade, pp. 43β44, 54.</ref> The song "[[Strange Fruit]]" was composed by [[Abel Meeropol]] in 1937, inspired by the photograph of a lynching in Marion, Indiana. Meeropol said of the photograph, "It haunted me for days."<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Cross and the Lynching Tree|url=https://archive.org/details/crosslynchingtre0000cone|url-access=registration|last=Cone|first=James H.|publisher=Oribis Books|year=2011|location=Maryknoll, New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/crosslynchingtre0000cone/page/134 134]}}</ref> It was published as a poem in the ''New York Teacher'' and later in the magazine ''[[New Masses]]'', in both cases under the pseudonym Lewis Allan. The poem was set to music, also by Meeropol, and the song was performed and popularized by [[Billie Holiday]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/film.html|website=Pbs.org|title=Strange Fruit}} PBS ''Independent Lens'' credits the music as well as the words to Meeropol, though Billie Holiday's autobiography and the Spartacus article credit her with co-authoring the song.</ref> The song has been performed by many other singers, including [[Nina Simone]]. By the 1950s, the [[civil rights movement]] was gaining new momentum. It was spurred by the lynching of [[Emmett Till]], a 14-year-old youth from Chicago who was killed while visiting an uncle in Mississippi. His mother insisted on having an open-casket funeral so that people could see how badly her son had been beaten. The Black community throughout the U.S. became mobilized.<ref name="Atlantic"/> Vann R. Newkirk wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of [[white supremacy]]".<ref name="Atlantic">{{Cite news|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/how-the-blood-of-emmett-till-still-stains-america-today/516891/|title=How 'The Blood of Emmett Till' Still Stains America Today|last=II|first=Vann R. Newkirk|work=The Atlantic|access-date=July 3, 2017|language=en-US}}</ref> The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were acquitted by an [[Racial discrimination in jury selection|all-white jury]].<ref>Whitfield, Stephen (1991). ''A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till''. pp 41β42. JHU Press.</ref> David Jackson writes that it was the photograph of the "child's ravaged body, that forced the world to reckon with the brutality of [[American racism]]."<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson|title=How The Horrific Photograph Of Emmett Till Helped Energize The Civil Rights Movement|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|access-date=July 3, 2017|archive-date=July 6, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170706123149/http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson|url-status=dead}}</ref> Most lynchings ceased by the 1960s,<ref name=tuskegee_umkc>{{cite web |url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingsstate.html |title=Lynchings: By State and Race, 1882β1968 |access-date=July 26, 2010 |quote=Statistics provided by the Archives at Tuskegee Institute. |publisher=University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100629081241/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingsstate.html |archive-date=June 29, 2010 }}</ref><ref name=tuskegee_umkc2>{{cite web |url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html |title=Lynchings: By Year and Race |access-date=July 26, 2010 |quote=Statistics provided by the Archives at Tuskegee Institute. |publisher=University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100724162418/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html |archive-date=July 24, 2010 }}</ref> but even in 2021 there were claims that racist lynchings still happen in the United States, being covered up as suicides.<ref>{{cite news|first=DeNeen L. |last=Brown |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/08/modern-day-mississippi-lynchings |title='Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped' |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=August 8, 2021 |accessdate=February 16, 2022}}</ref> In 2018, the [[National Memorial for Peace and Justice]] was opened in Montgomery, Alabama, a memorial that commemorates the victims of lynchings in the United States. On March 29, 2022, President [[Joe Biden]] signed the [[Emmett Till Antilynching Act]] of 2022 into law, which classified lynching as a federal [[hate crime]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Zaslav |first=Ali |date=March 8, 2022 |title=Senate passes Emmett Till Antilynching Act of 2022 |url=https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/07/politics/senate-passes-antilynching-law/index.html |access-date=March 29, 2022 |work=CNN}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Shear |first=Michael D. |date=March 29, 2022 |title=Biden Signs Bill to Make Lynching a Federal Crime |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/us/politics/biden-signs-anti-lynching-bill.html |access-date=March 30, 2022 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
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