Image: from NPR’s How Black activists used lynching souvenirs to expose American violence.
Resources
Interactive map of lynchings in U.S. history. See also This Smithsonian article about the project.
The nation’s first memorial dedicated to victims of lynchings opened in 2018: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
Website companion to James Allen’s book Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America.
Ken Gonzales-Day: self-guided walking tour of lynching sites in Los Angeles.
Articles
Brent Campney: Review of At the Alter of Lynching, a book that explores the relationship between southern religion and anti-Black lynching.
William D. Carrigan: No Ordinary Crime: Reflections on the Future of the History of Mob Violence.
William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb: When Americans Lynched Mexicans.
Death Penalty Information Center: History of Lynchings of Mexican Americans Provides Context for Recent Challenges to U.S. Death Penalty.
George Diaz: A Review of The Lynching of Mexicans in the Texas Borderlands.
Equal Justice Initiative: 2015 report on lynching.
Crystal N. Feimster: Ida B. Wells and the Lynching of Black Women.
Terence Finnegan: “Politics of Defiance”: Uncovering the Causes and Consequences of Lynching and Communal Violence.
Lawrence B. Glickman: Why President Trump used lynching as a metaphor: The long history of politicians claiming to be victims of lynching and racial violence.
Karlos K. Hill: Are Police Shootings Really Like Lynchings?
Cecily Hilleary: Remembering Native American Lynching Victims.
Brigit Katz: 2018: The U.S. Finally Made Lynching a Federal Crime.
Kevin Kruse: Twitter thread breaking down the long history of anti-lynching efforts.
Louis P. Masur: Why it took a century to pass an anti-lynching law: A century of political organizing could not overcome a powerful tool of white supremacy — until now.
Michael J. Pfeifer: At the Hands of Parties Unknown? The State of the Field of Lynching Scholarship.
Michael J. Pfeifer: Final Thoughts on the State of the Field of Lynching Scholarship.
Brent Staples: When Southern Newspapers Justified Lynching.
Brent Staples: So the South’s White Terror Will Never Be Forgotten.
Michael Ayers Trotti: The Multiple States and Fields of Lynching Scholarship.
Margaret Vandiver: Thoughts on Directions in Lynching Research.
Interview with Jason Morgan Ward about his book Hanging Bridge.
Jason Morgan Ward: The Infamous Lynching Site That Still Stands in Mississippi.
Jason Morgan Ward: Shades of Violence: Jim Crow Justice and Black Resistance in the Depression-Era South.
Kidada E. Williams: Regarding the Aftermaths of Lynching.
Amy Louise Wood: Critical Conversation on Donald Mathews’s ‘The Southern Rite of Human Sacrifice’.
Videos & Podcasts
Historian William Carrigan, discussing the lynching of Mexicans.
NPR interviews with historian Philip Dray, author of At the Hands of Persons Unknown, and James Allen, author of Without Sanctuary.
Lecture by Philip Dray about his book At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America.
2005 Senate apology for refusing to pass anti-lynching legislation for over a century.
Ken Gonzales-Day, discussing his book Lynching in the West.
Ken Gonzales-Day: Run Up, a two-minute recreation of California’s last documented lynching of a Latino.
Karlos K. Hill offering an excellent overview of the history of lynching.
Karlos K. Hill: A historian of lynching describes his experience of visiting the new memorial to lynching museum.
Past Present Podcast: historians discuss whether “lynching” is the appropriate term to discuss the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in 2020.
Jason Morgan Ward: The Swastika Entwined with Magnolia Blossoms.
Interview with Amy Louise Wood, author of Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940.
Books
James Allen: Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America.
Dora Apel: Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob.
Dora Apel & Shawn Michelle Smith: Lynching Photographs.
Manfred Berg: Popular Justice: A History of Lynching in America.
William D. Carrigan: The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836-1916.
William D. Carrigan & Clive Webb: Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928.
William D. Carrigan & Christopher Waldrep: Swift to Wrath: Lynching in Global Historical Perspective.
Philip Dray: At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America.
Crystal N. Feimster: Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching.
Ken Gonzales-Day: Lynching in the West: 1850–1935.
Karlos K. Hill: Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory.
Vanessa A. Holloway: Getting Away with Murder: The Twentieth-Century Struggle for Civil Rights in the U.S. Senate.
Donald G. Mathews: At the Altar of Lynching: Burning Sam Hose in the American South.
Ersula J. Ore: Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity.
Michael J. Pfeifer: Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874-1947.
Michael J. Pfeifer: The Roots of Rough Justice: Origins of American Lynching.
Michael J. Pfeifer: Global Lynching and Collective Violence: Volume 2: The Americas and Europe.
Nicholas Villanueva Jr.: The Lynching of Mexicans in the Texas Borderlands.
Christopher Waldrep: Lynching in America: A History in Documents.
Jason Morgan Ward: Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century.
Amy Louise Wood: Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940.