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Please help improve this article by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (January 2007)

As of today, length is 28kB; someone more familiar with the editing process here should be thinking about which sections to archive.
--Jerzy•t 23:26, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

What about the "Black Hawk Down incident"?

Contents 1 Tory 2 Public spectacle 3 Definition edited 4 Billie Holiday 5 Killing Israeli assassins in the Occupied Territories is not lynching 6 Zio POV? 7 Page protection 8 Points of View 9 Jayjg and Viditas deleting lynching by Israelis 10 guatamala 11 Lynching in Iraq 12 Reboot reversion 13 Israel issue 14 Lynching and Capital Punishment 15 Images 16 Michael Donald lynching image 17 Scope of the Article 17.1 Splitting article 17.2 Article Title 18 Lynching in Israel 19 Image caption 20 Reign of Terror 21 List of Lynchings in America 22 My oh My 23 Lynching in America was not just hanging 24 Did you forget about Michael Donald, lynched in 1981 25 Clarifying statistics 26 Really Dumb Question 27 Jena Six 28 Lynching not international under that title 29 Lynching was not Ethnic cleansing 30 Lynching not 'most often' murder 31 ??Only killing?? 32 succinctness 33 Definition 34 Questionable material 35 Article weighted too heavily to US definitions and situations 36 Lead is too long 37 Colfax Massacre and Race Riots 38 Civil rights and the color of law 39 Problems with the Lead 40 White/Caucasian. 41 NPOV Phrasing 42 Etymology 43 Media lynching 44 Lynchings of whites

[edit] Tory

is the "torries->tory" link a mistake? -- Hotlorp

Yes & No. I think there should be a redirect page which defines the usage in the context of the American Revolution. Giving statistical facts (1/3 tory, 1/3 neutral and 1/3 independance etc.), noted torries, etc. Certainly the term tory (which was used to those whom were loyal to england) evolved from the other usage.

[edit] Public spectacle

"A disturbing aspect of lynching was its appeal as a grand event. Among the atrocities dwelt small children brought by their parents to watch, the bodies of the victims were often dismembered and pieces were kept as souveniers, pictures were taken near the often charred body, and tickets were even sold. Lynching was treated as a form of recreation."

While disturbing, this is not unique to lynching. These are all common aspects of public executions (both legal and extra-legal) throughout history. It's a big part of why I love lynching black people. Rossami 21:01 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Echo that, and note the spirit is not dead. The otherwise wonderful song "Yahoo" as recorded by the contemporary Red Clay Ramblers[1] says of the word "Yahoo"

It's a gift from the prairie:

You shout it when a bad man jigs.

Mighty good for calling pigs.

But i didn't notice whether something on this aspect made it back into the article; IMO something addressing this is appropriate despite that poor start, and the danger of trivializing the life and death issues of vigilantism and of enforcement of fourth-class citizenship.
--Jerzy•t 18:40, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Definition edited

I edited the defenition to be more specific, along with adding some headings. If you object to any of the changes, please edit this page and give me some arguments. Of course, praise will be accepted as well :) - MGM 11:38, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Billie Holiday

Is this really relevant enough to warrant a subsection on this page? --Tothebarricades.tk 04:21, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Why not? It's a classic song. Unsigned on 02:05, 8 March 2005 by 213.112.113.71

It is a classic song and it is very important in understanding the culutral relevance of lynching. Lyncing ran deep enough in society to become the subject of folk material, which, being folk material essentially means that it is meant to be passed on in society and not forgotten. The inclusion of this song just furthers the importance of lynching in one particular community, that being the black community of the US. Jay campbell 05:44, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

The suggestion above that "Strange Fruit" is "folk material", whether carelessly misleading or simply ignorant, should not go uncontradicted. Poet Abel Meeropol, apparently economically productive as a songwriter for e.g. Sinatra, was a white New York Jewish Cold-War secret member of the Stalinist Communist Party USA, who would have known that his excellent cultural contribution adhered with his party's Moscow-approved political "line". (How closely he was associated with his adopted sons' executed birth-parents, the atomic spy Julius & at-least-complicit Ethel Rosenberg, is not known to me.)
--Jerzy•t 22:59, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

What a mess: The section is gone where it belongs, into a Lynching in the United States separate article , but no one even copied the discussion on it there, let alone moved it, or copied & struck it thru.
--Jerzy•t 22:59, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

An over-annotated lk

* Lyrics to the Billy Holiday song about lynching:Strange Fruit

has just been added at the bottom. WP isn't a Web index, so a Strange Fruit "See also" (that article includes the lyrics already, BTW) would be inherantly more appropriate, even if there weren't a whole section in Lynching in the United States. Further, the #1 hit in my search (which is already and more appropriately in Strange Fruit) is better for its Google rating, and for being on a less obviously PoV site than the domain "historyisaweapon.com" suggests.
--Jerzy•t 22:59, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Killing Israeli assassins in the Occupied Territories is not lynching

Killing members of the Israeli military that is illegally occupying the Palestinian territories is not "lynching" just like the Palestinian "terrorists" and civilians killed by Israeli soldiers are not described as "murdered" in any article in Wikipedia. Lynching is murder. Do the cases of Israeli settlers killing palestinian civilians ever get described as lynching? No. It's a POV problem due to Israeli domination of English language media: ""The extent to which some journalism simply assumes the Israeli perspective can be seen if the statements are 'reversed ' and presented as Palestinian actions. The group did NOT find any reports stating that 'The Palestinian attacks were in retaliation for the murder of those resisting the illegal Israeli occupation'." "A news journalism which seeks neutrality should not endorse any point of view, but there were many departures from this principle." "Words such as 'murder', 'atrocity', 'lynching' and 'savage cold-blooded killing' were only used to describe Israeli deaths but not those of Palestinians." "...only 30% (believed that more Palestinians had died than Israelis). The same number believed either that the Israelis had the most casualties or that casualties were equal for both sides." " [2]

Lynching is an extra-judicial killing by a mob. Were the Israeli reservists brought to a court and sentenced to be torn limb from limb by a howling bloodthirsty mob? If not, it was a lynching. Jayjg 23:32, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You are very colorful in your POV terms when two Israeli assassins are captured and killed but you are very neutral in your description of atrocities when the IDF uses US-taxpayer supplied missiles to blow Palestinian children and babies to pieces and when bloodthirsty Jews massacre dozens of civilians in Jenin and Jabalia. Why? Because you are an obvious Zionist bigot. --Alberuni 03:44, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your response doesn't address the issue, and is a personal attack. Jayjg 11:12, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Alberuni, please do not call other contributors names such as Zionist or bigot. Jay, please ignore personal remarks; if you can't think of anything to say which will continue a fruitful dialogue, then just say nothing. --user:Ed Poor (talk) 19:16, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Zio POV?

Exactly how could a paragraph using as references Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the BBC, the Guardian, B'Tselem, and the pro-Palestinian website "From Occupied Palestine" be "Zio POV"? Jayjg 16:59, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Because as usual with your incessant propagandistic pro-Israeli POV pushing, it is the Zionist Israeli perspective and only the Zionist perspective that ever gets through. You are a base apologist for the non-stop atrocities committed by Zionists in the name of Israel and Judaism. Why aren't the names Rachel Corrie Tom Hurndall and Ahmed Abdel Hamida [3] included in the list of victims of Israeli pogroms, extrajudicial assassinations and other murders that Jews commit in lynching Palestinians and their supporters?[4]. Yes, the surviving Palestinians lynched Baruch Goldstein. Why do you see only the "bloodthirsty mob" that kills Israelis but you neglect to note that the Israelis and their collaborators are mass murderers themselves. --Alberuni 18:17, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the BBC, the Guardian, B'Tselem, and the pro-Palestinian website "From Occupied Palestine" are engaging in "propagandistic pro-Israeli POV pushing" and promoting a "Zionist Israeli perspective"? All of these groups have stated that lynchings are going on the territories, and have described specific and infamous ones. NPOV demands that you present a perspective, and provide reasonable sources. Do you object to them as sources? Regarding the names you have raised, are you claiming that Corrie and Hurndall were lynched? And is the killing of Hamida typical of the conflict? And who mentioned Goldstein, I didn't see that in the paragraph? Jayjg 18:28, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

So in the minority of deaths when Israelis are killed, you think it is representative of the conflict but as in most of the deaths, when Israelis kill Arabs, you wonder if it's typical of the conflict. Your POV is disgusting. Yes, the entire Zionist enterprise is a genocidal campaign against the native Palestinians by supremacist Jews. Zionists lynching Palestinians has become so routine that you consider it normal. --Alberuni 19:04, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actually, what I think is more representative is the lynchings of Arab "collaborators" by other Arabs, which seems by far to be the most common kind of lynching going on. As for the Ramallah lynching, it was perhaps the most famous lynching in the conflict, and one that probably had the most effect in terms of hardening Israeli attitudes and leading to the election of right-wingers. Regarding "Zionists lynching Palestinians" becoming "routine", have there been other similar incidents besides the one you just listed above (which actually was a lynching of an Arab-American, not a Palestinian)? Jayjg 20:38, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Like I said, the extrajudicial murder of Palestinians by Israelis; civilians, settlers and the IDF (none of whom are ever prosecuted or punished) is so routine that you don't even recognize it as a lynching. It's just business as usual in the Jewish state. --Alberuni 21:15, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Lynching has the aspect of being carried out by a mob. Do you have any other examples like Hamida? Jayjg 21:24, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I was going to make another comment about "no personal remarks" but I had to chuckle:

• your incessant propagandistic pro-Israeli POV pushing

the israeli lynch is really anti-israel POV the Arab-american who "accidantly" slided through a bus station got out of the car (which was propably still close to the station filled with people) and shouted "alkha ahbar" and then he was shot (with the emphasis on "shot") (by one person not a mob) lynching in my understanding is either brutal execution by beating or carrying the lynched and then hanging him. many of the suicide bombers shout "alkha ahbar" before detonating the bomb (or so the media describes) so it was much more of a self-protection then a lynch —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.250.80.195 (talk • contribs) 26 September 2006.This is an interpolation in a nearly 2-year-old discussion.

The alliteration was too punchy and powerful for personal palliatives... ;-) --user:Ed Poor (talk) 19:19, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Page protection

I locked the page because of repeated deletion of disputed text. I glanced at the 'edit summaries' in page history and looked at 2 or 3 diffs. I have NOT read this talk page yet.

Disclaimer: I am an "interested party", so if anyone disputes my objectivity in taking an admin action, speak up quick! I will recuse myself if need be. --user:Ed Poor (talk) 19:12, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

I, as a party w/o a conventional POV re: matters of Israeli - Palistine, and with an interest in the subject of Mob justice generally, offer my services as well. I request that Ed Poor not recuse himself, and, as usual, for Jayjg & Alberuni to seek mediation. [[User:Sam Spade|Sam Spade Arb Com election]] 19:20, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This isn't between Alberuni and me. Jayjg 21:32, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

All I know is I see the 2 of you in conflict regularly. I admit I see one of you being the agressor, but either way, the Wikipedia:Conflict resolution should be followed, and the high ground must be taken. [[User:Sam Spade|Sam Spade Arb Com election]] 23:30, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ed, if you've protected it, you should probably put the {{protected}} template in it, and list it on the page of protected pages. Jayjg 21:33, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Points of View

Okay, now to serious matters:

Alberuni's viewpoint is that the Israeli presence in WB/GS is morally wrong. Indeed, he has adopted the commonly expressed Arab POV that their presence constitutes an "illegal occupation".

Alberuni's POV is in contrast with that expressed at palestinefacts.org which rebuts the "claim" that Israel's presence is (a) "illegal" or (b) an occupation.

I suggest that we drop lynching for a moment and work together on the Occupied Palestinian Territories article. Either the Wikipedia (a) should endorse the Arab POV that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are occupied territories, or (b) it should remain neutral on this disputed matter and instead explain WHY the opposing sides disagree about this point. (Even if it's a case of Israel's POV is only a few hundred thousand "extremist" Jews, and Arab POV is the overwhelming majority of the world.) --user:Ed Poor (talk) 19:27, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Please do not express my views on my behalf. Speak for yourself. Dealing with the Occupied territories should be no different than dealing with the Malvinas Islands, Taiwan or territory of Kashmir. Express all POVs and attribute them accordingly. Instead, Wikipedia hasbarists work overtime to promote their POV and bury the Palestinians' into nothingness, as usual. --Alberuni 21:19, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)</nowiki>

Sorry, I was only guessing. If I've mis-stating your views in an attempt to mediate this dispute between you and Jay, I owe you an apology. Perhaps we should just focus on improving the article itself. --user:Ed Poor (talk) 21:44, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Jayjg and Viditas deleting lynching by Israelis

Typical one-sided POV Zionists. I provide links to incidents and they delete it. Also, Palestine is not a country - yet. They insist on calling the region Palestine when it refers to crimes like lynching when in fact the region is Israel and the Occupied Territories, or Israel and the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. Why do they lie? Because they are ZIONIST REVISIONISTS, history deniers and partisan POV pushers. --Alberuni 19:36, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You've done a lot more than insert new information, you've POVd a lot of existing text. As for your insertions, the language is POV, and the sources are rather surprising for someone who constantly complains about the sources others use. The existing information uses sources like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, BBC, the Guardian. You should practice what you preach. Jayjg 20:02, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've added info on the incidents in your links to the article as follows: "There have also been incidents of Israelis lynching or attempting to lynch Arabs suspected of terrorism, including the beating and killing of an American tourist after he accidentally skidded his car into a Jerusalem bus, killing an Israeli woman, and an attempt on an innocent Arab bystander after a Palestinian suicide bombing." --MPerel 22:22, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks MPerel. You have a better understanding of NPOV. --Alberuni 00:47, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] guatamala

i recently saw on tv scenes of gang members being lynched in guatamala by a mob in a town centre in broad daylight they were badly beaten before being burned aliveBouse23 14:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lynching in Iraq

"On March 31, 2004, Iraqi citizens killed four American Blackwater USA security guards operating in Fallujah, Iraq in support of the Coalition Provisional Authority."

How is this an extrajudicial execution? --Vorpalbla 14:32, 3/27/05

Whatever else it may be, the entire section

==Iraq==

On March 31, 2004, Iraqi citizens killed four American Blackwater USA security guards operating in Fallujah, Iraq in support of the Coalition Provisional Authority. The car in which the four Americans were driving was attacked by guerillas. All four men were killed. After the car and people were burned, the bodies were mutilated and two of them were hanged from the main bridge over the Euphrates leading to the city.

is a serious (however ambiguous) failure of NPoV, in singling out one incident among the thousands (tens or hundreds of thousands?) of killings by people who are neither peace officers nor soldiers of anything but (at most and only in some cases) a thoroughly collapsed lawless dictatorship. At the very least it needs to say why this deserves singling out. At this point, putting any such section in the article w/o exhaustive discussion on this talk page should be treated as vandalism.
--Jerzy•t 18:24, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reboot reversion

I removed:

" Lynching of black people was not officially recognised as a crime (although attempts to prosecute were often made under other pretences) in the United States until 1940. "

a contribution from an anonymous (somehow I don't think the ip is meaningful) editor. It is somewhat misleading. There were in many places no "anti-lynching laws" but to say it was not "officially" recognized as crime isn't entirely accurate. As I understand it, local law enforcement simply chose not to enforce less-specific laws in these instances (and sometimes even participated in the lynchings). There is no specific law about murdering someone by drowning them in Kool-aide, but that doesn't mean its not covered. Its the wording I think is misleading. --Reboot 22:40 EST, 4-Apr-2005

I agree with [User:Reboot]. Even now, "lynching" is not a specific federal crime. Murder is a crime in each state. The problem was that the laws were not enforced well. The anti-lynching laws that were debated in the '30s and '40s were attempts to make failing to protect a prisoner a new federal crime. Morris 02:40, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Israel issue

While I have no opinion on this, I reveretd edit "One fringe news report, from an Egyptian and notoriously anti-Israel source trumpeted conspircay theories that the Jews were undercover agents or assassins, a claim that is demonstrably false."

back to

"Some news reports said that they were suspected of being undercover agents or assassins."

I have added an NPOV check message.

Saksham 15:17, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)Saksham

[edit] Lynching and Capital Punishment

I have done a bit of research on lynching in the southern parts of the US during the 1800's, but I would like to know a bit more. Has anyone done any? Would he or she like to pass some info along to me, striclty for my own knowledge? I am particularly interested in how and why lynching began to take the place of capital punishment in the standard legal systems. What was going on with them? Were they too relaxed? Were people simply more blood thirsty? I am truly interested in this phenomenon. Jay campbell 05:58, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Images

I've added several public domain images. They're very disturbing to look at, of course. I hope nobody will see this as sensationalistic, or disrespectful to the victims. I included the Waco image specifically because it was so horrific; I don't think we gain anything by letting people avoid thinking about how horrible the reality was. In the photo in the lead section, I added some explanation at the bottom of the caption so that it would have the right context, and people wouldn't conclude that the victim must have been a criminal; this could be seen as redundant, but I think it's important to provide that context, since the photo is the first thing people are going to see when they read the article. In the Waco case, my inclusion of the details of the trial (he confessed) could be seen as a justification for the lynching, but I think it's important to give all the facts. I think lynching was horrible enough without trying to give a slant to the facts.--Bcrowell 18:09, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I found some relevant info on the page Wikipedia:Profanity: "Images, particularly photos, often have a greater impact than words. Therefore, it may be preferable not to embed possibly offensive images in articles, but rather use a [[media:image name]] link with an appropriate warning. On the other hand, if the page title already tells the reader what to expect (e.g. Erotic art in Pompeii), such a warning may be unnecessary. Censorship should be avoided, if an image adds something to an article." It seems to me that these images do add something to the article, and the title of the page does already tell the reader what to expect.--Bcrowell 18:24, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I certainly appreciate your pitching in to improve the article, but I'm getting concerned that it looks image-heavy. I changed the fomratting of a few to mix it up a little (all on the right looks lousy), but I'm wondering if each of the individual lynching images actually adds something substantial to the article. (Keep in mind that some of them have their own articles.) --Dhartung | Talk 23:12, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is a big, important subject in U.S. history, and I think the text should be expanded, which would also have the effect of reducing the image-heaviness. Here's what I feel is the relevance of the individual images:

• Lige Daniels, 1920: Shows that lynching was a socially approved thing, not something that was always done in the middle of the night by a few violent people.
• unknown victim, 1889: The only image in the article from the period of Reconstruction.
• Jesse Washington, 1916: This is a hard image to look at. I think it shows the level of sadism that was involved in many of the lynchings.
• Will James, Cairo, 1909: Graphically demonstrates the circus-like style of many of the lynchings. I think very few Americans realize that such a thing ever existed.
• Michael Donald, 1981: Shows that lynching is not only a thing of the distant past, and was very important historically for its impact on the KKK.
• Duluth, 1920: Shows that lynching wasn't just a phenomenon of the southeastern U.S.

--Bcrowell 03:28, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It occurred to me that I should mention one more thing. In the talk page on the closely related KKK article, there has been some discussion about whether the Klan is a terrorist organization, whether there is a good side to the Klan, and whether the Klan has been, at all times and in all its many incarnations, a violent organization. Although six images of lynchings in this article may seem like a lot, I think many people have a hard time accepting that this was a commonplace part of how America worked for a long time, and that it wasn't just restricted to the southeast during the 19th century.--Bcrowell 03:43, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Quite the fervent defense there! I don't disagree with your reasoning, I just don't think that Wikipedia is that great a place for displaying images and they should be there to illustrate the article. In this case the article is very rough around the edges...

the text should be expanded Well, yeah, that's what I was doing when you waltzed in. ;-) Seriously, I'm quite glad for the help! I had only barely done some needed reorganization (I haven't touched the terribly uneven "international" sections) and my hope was to give a broader context. For one thing I felt the entry gave very short shrift to the idea that there was a whole continuum of lynching which included African-American victims. To be perfectly honest, I'm wary of letting the article slip back into a similar POV state, which is something that could be encouraged by the shock value of a lot of images. I hope you don't take this the wrong way, as I don't have any strong counter-argument for any individual image you've added.

Since I don't want this to get at all testy, the better approach might be to resize some of the images so that they don't take over visually and fit better into the text at typical browser reading sizes. I'm thinking that my monitor and resolution are above average, so I really wonder what my mom would see in IE on her small screen! --Dhartung | Talk 04:05, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Note: I moved part of this discussion to the "Images" section instead

One tangential note: I was really struck, looking at the KKK image in full size, how much they looked like gangbangers. It could almost be the cover of a rap album -- all the more so because people today have forgotten any other KKK outfit but the white robe.--Dhartung | Talk 04:10, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think we're on the same wavelength here. I realize that this is the type of hot-button article where conflict between editors could easily occur, but I think we can work together here.

Reducing the size of some of the images would be fine, but I'd like to point out that the Cairo one might be hard to understand if it was reduced.

I think you're right that the article could do a better job of representing the fact that not all lynching victims were black. The Cairo lynching, for example, was actually a double lynching of two unrelated people, one black and one white. One good thing about the image of the Leo Frank newspaper article is that it shows that lynching wasn't just directed at black people. It would be interesting to know if there are any reliable statistics on the percentage of lynching victims who were black.

Yes, the organization of the article is very awkward. What would you think of spinning off the part about lynchings in the U.S. into a separate article?

I'd like to make two points about how NPOV relates to the images: (1) the postcard images were intended as propaganda in favor of lynching, so their inclusion in the article could be interpreted as representing the pro-lynching POV; (2) I've tried to provide enough context to allow the reader to understand the lynching images thoroughly, even when this meant going into the (possibly bogus) accusations against the people who were lynched.--Bcrowell 04:33, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Michael Donald lynching image

I've added a photo of the 1981 Michael Donald lynching. I believe it falls within Wikipedia's guidelines for fair use, and I think it's necessary to the article, because if the article is weighted heavily toward pre-1922 images, and never shows anything within the last 50 years, people will get the comfortable feeling that lynching is a thing of the past. The Michael Donald lynching was also extremely historically important, because of the large civil judgment, which had the effect of bankrupting one of the large national Ku Klux Klan organizations, and furthering the decentralization of the Klan.--Bcrowell 20:48, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the Michael Donald murder is the same as earlier lynchings, despite the fact that the peretrators used the familiar "symbol" of hanging. Yes, it was a "retaliatory" murder conceived by some KKK members, but it was far more deliberate and not the result of group violence, as were many earlier lynchings. It was a hate crime, certainly, and brutal. The large civil judgment against the KKK was a positive precedent.--Parkwells 01:04, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scope of the Article

[edit] Splitting article

Dhartung and I discussed above the fact that the current organization of this page is awkward, and I suggested spinning off the discussion of lynching in the U.S. into a separate article. Nobody else has commented pro or con, so I'm going to go ahead and do it.--Bcrowell 15:27, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Good move. Needs maintenance in the long term, tho: i removed

The term "lynching" is believed to come from Charles Lynch, whose vigilance committee, an irregular court, tried and punished petty criminals and supporters of the British during the U.S. Revolutionary War.

The term has also been referenced as being derived from William Lynch giver of the William Lynch Speech: The Making of a Slave--A speech by the British-born, Carribean plantation owner that visited Virginia to describe how best to "break" and control slaves. The controversial speech has been cited numerous times by Louis Farrakhan et al.

to Talk:Lynching in the United States (where etymology is under discussion) bcz it is too much detail for this page, let alone for the lead 'graph.
--Jerzy•t 23:18, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand. Why was the paragraph about the etymology removed? Surely it should be in this article, not in Lynching in the United States, don't you agree? Ericbodden (talk) 03:01, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article Title

I question the value of Lynching as a title to cover primarily non-US events:

1. The term is of American origin, and i've not yet seen evidence that it is widely applied to other places, other by Americans as an analogy, when searching for a usable word.
2. While the characteristics of American lynching could theoretically develop elsewhere, this article shows no evidence of it:

   _ _ The US examples cited here are all about one thing(and i presume those in the long Lynching in the United States article are predominantly about it): a well-established pattern of illegal violence by people of a politically dominant group, tolerated (for reasons at various points along a scale stretching from the political cost of doing otherwise, to whole-hearted endorsement of the pattern), in an otherwise highly pluralistic and legalistic society.

   _ _ The Iraq example, that i moved to talk, has the context of military occupation and incipient civil war, and is too vague (about the logic both of labelling it "lynching" and of restricting it to one instance) to guess what its author is really aiming at.

   _ _ The rest fall into two categories, both markedly different from the US ones, tho they resemble each other in involving either

   attacks by (at least relatively) disenfranchised people or

   at least two properties among these three: aborted mob violence, absence of a pattern of highly similar lynchings, and practical inability of authorities to interfere.

   Further, the Palestinian-involved and South African ones are, in contrast to US lynching, part of multi-generation-long patterns of ongoing military, police, and guerrilla violence.

3. There has been no apparent effort to distinguish among these three categories:

   spontaneous mob violence colored by indignation,

   (1) against its specific victims or

   (2) against those with merely remote perceived connection to a perceived grievance;

   (3)organized illegal paramilitary operations.;

As to (1) thru (3), i don't mean to say one is lynching and another not, but rather: that lynching historically in the US may well reflect a progression from

_ _ awareness of a history of frontier rough justice for clear violations of statute law and

_ _ experience of occasional Civil War martial law,

_ _ perhaps via urgent measures when taken Union troops seemed unsympathetic in the face of clear violations of statute law (the "Birth of a Nation" scenario),

_ _ in any case to Klan-organized lynching parties treating fear as a primary goal and justice as at best a secondary one,

_ _ in turn contributing to a sense of more spontaneous group violence being a low-risk option.

Again, my point isn't really to suggest that some of those stages are or aren't lynching. Rather, i am arguing against the view that lynching is just a term for a form of violence definable by an intent and acts and result -- the view that you assume when you try to write about "lynching" outside an American context; i'm suggesting that such criteria for defining what constitute a lynching are as impossible as defining what constitutes bushido on the part of an American, or Gemütlichkeit in Mobile, or southern hospitality in Augsburg. I think "lynching" is more like a name for a specific social and political phenomenon that occurred in the US, expressed primarily in the South and Border States but still part of the lynching phenomenon when it found expression in the North: nothing more or less than event that has a role in the history of American race relations, roughly along the lines of fitting into the true version of the progression i tried to describe. And if i am right, some arguements on this page are symptoms of ignoring that. Arguements about what constitutes illegality in the occupied territories (and the arguing that i await, based on claims that the occupation of Iraq is or isn't illegal) are ill-conceived ones invited by the misnaming of this article. None of the non-US examples are lynching, because lynching has too complex a history to be exportable. If it happens elsewhere, you might as well just look for another name for it.
--Jerzy•t 05:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. The article would be better if it was only about US 'lynching' as that is what the word is used for 90% of the time. Covering all 'extra-judicial killings' would make the article very long and raise questions about what constitutes 'extra-judicial'. The non US sections seem to mostly be sensationalist reports of individual killings, rather than a description of the practice as a whole. It would be better to provide links along the lines of Extra judicial killings - South Africa

And like User:Jmabel has noted, the killings during the Reign of Terror as not very similar to Deep South lynchings and don't really belong in the same article. Ashmoo 07:15, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

As I note at the bottom of this Talk page, the social control mechanism of which lynching is a form has existed in all traditional cultures, to varying degrees (usually falling short of murder), but I don't think the article is aided by trying to use "lynching" as the term to cover other cultures. There's a long history of "community social control" expressed in England and Europe's "rough music" and charivari, sometimes taking the form of "riding the rail" and "tarring and feathering", that were taken with immigrants to the colonies. Sociologists and historians have studied these recurring events as a cycle of the communities picking scapegoats and targeting the scapegoats with violence to express community anxiety about social change. I'll work more on this.--Parkwells 13:47, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lynching in Israel

note that in the example given for lynching in Israel, from Feb. 1996, the claim that the Arab driver ran over Israelis accidentally was later turned over by investigation, and the event was reclassified as a terrorist attack.

[edit] Image caption

A writer to info-en@wikimedia.org states that the photo cannot have been taken in Center, Texas based on the the fact that the writer remembers no building ever being in that town with an appearance similar to the one depicted. The facts of the matter were that while the murder Lige Daniels was accused of occured in Center, Texas, Daniels was taken to a jail in Nacogdoches, Texas to be held for trial. The lynching may have taken place there; the writer to info-en was unsure. I bring this matter to the attention of editors already involved in this article so that it may be properly addressed. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 17:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reign of Terror

From the article:

Lynch law is sometimes justified by its supporters as the administration of justice (in a social-moral sense, not in law) without the delays and inefficencies inherent to the legal system; in this way it echoes the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, which was justified by the claim "Terror is nothing more than Justice, swift and certain."

I think there is a serious misunderstanding here. While the Reign of Terror was brutal, it is a very in-apt comparison here, no more appropriate to invoke than Nazi death camps or the Holodomor. In no small measure, the laws that initiated the Reign of Terror were passed precisely to head off lynching: the people of Paris demanded harsher justice, and the formal Terror was intended to prevent a recurrence of something like the September Massacres. The (unattributed) quotation here from Robespierre may have had a bit of special pleading and/or demagogy to it, and the Revolutionary Tribunals of the French Revolutionary era may have been kangaroo courts, but they had the trappings of legality, and (again) were initiated partly in the hope of preserving some trace of legalism and at least allowing the government rather than the mob to choose who would die.

Interestingly, after writing this, and while trying to find some relevant references, I found that Britannica makes exactly the same distinction I just made, specifically contrasting the Reign of Terror to lynching.

So, can we get this out of there? - Jmabel | Talk 02:20, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll delete it. Actually, I think the whole article should be deleted. Lynching is not a widely used term outside the United States, and there is not enough substantive material that we seem to have to write about other cultures. Something like lynching goes on - pogroms and necklacing, but there has to be a different title to use for them. --Parkwells 22:28, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of Lynchings in America

By even the lowest estimates, there were thousands of racially motivated lynchings in the United States. So why do we have a section here that lists 11 of them? - Jmabel | Talk 00:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My oh My

Guess it goes to show that Wikipedia comments as much upon its editors as the edits they themselves make! In this case, that American editors are completely ignorant of the actual origin of the term, "to lynch" - as they are of the broader world in general. I find it ridiculous to the extent that I can't be bothered to edit the article - 'Lynch Law' finds its name in the Lord Mayor of Galway City, in Ireland, who, in the 16th century, hanged his own son for murder rather than give him pardon. It came to symbolise harsh law outside the courts. His name happened to be?...and it wasn't Murphy. God bless you people, really. Documented, attested, sustained...has nothing to do with 'the for sailor' or that nonsense about the English for 'hill'. Lynch Law is as I said.Iamlondon 05:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Could you give a source for that? --Apoc2400 15:30, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Is this a guessing game? What is the answer to the question? Or, is this an April Fool's joke? What was the name of the man who was Lord Mayor of Galway City, in Ireland, who, in the 16th century, hanged his own son for murder rather than give him pardon? Bus stop 16:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Mayors of the Tribes, 1485-1654 -- Notice a recurring surname? 216.107.82.155 15:46, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lynching in America was not just hanging

it often included mutilation, and the body parts such as fingers and ears were given out to the spectators. web de bois saw the knuckles of one lynched man in a store in georgia which inspired him to be a civil rights activist.

that info (in some other form) should be included.

[edit] Did you forget about Michael Donald, lynched in 1981

The "United States" section says Lynch Law declined sharply after 1935, and there have been no reported incidents of this type since the late 1960s. How about Michael Donald? --Apoc2400 15:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Arguable. Michael Donald was properly a murder (hate crime) and mutilation of the dead body by hanging from a tree. The lynch mob consisted of two men who clubbed him and then cut his throat.71.197.106.123 21:02, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree - the Michael Donald murder was not a classic lynching, despite the fact that the perpetrators used the classic symbol of hanging. It's a mistake to put it in this category.--Parkwells 01:06, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

hey wait a minute-- i don't know what you mean by classic. the definition of lynching is murder by a mob.Skywriter 01:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Donald was murdered by two men, not by a mob. One man's father was a KKK member and promoted the retaliatory killing. It was a deliberate attack on a man randomly picked, but not related to his alleged transgressions, and it was not like the lynchings in which a crowd of people attacked and killed a single victim. That was the distinction I was trying to make - I think this murder and James Byrd's were hate crimes.--Parkwells 15:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clarifying statistics

Considering the "fulminary" nature of the subject, this is an awfully good article. I have one suggestion (for the United States section). Thirty years ago (in law school) I saw a chart of recorded lynchings in America (including ALL states). It was done w the lynchees in the rows (separated white/black) and the lynchers in the columns (separated white/black). I was astonished to see that all possible combinations had numbers. Most were blacks lynched by whites, but blacks occasionally lynched whites and in about 10 cases, ALL WHITE JURIES found "justifiable homicide" i.e. "not guilty". Anyone who can find that chart again and post it will add an absolutely fascinating expansion to the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.197.106.123 (talk) 20:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC).Ooops 71.197.106.123 21:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Really Dumb Question

I have read most of this article, but cannot for the life of me figure out what Lynching actually is. On the Lynching in the United States page it says, "Originally, lynching meant any extra-judicial punishment, including tarring and feathering and running out of town, but during the 19th century in the United States, it began to be used to refer specifically to execution, usually by hanging." But on this page it only says that Lynching is older that stoning.

That is like saying that Marcia is older than Jan to a person who doesn't know what the Brady Bunch is. This page also says that it is a "form of violence, usually execution, conceived of by its perpetrators as extrajudicial punishment for offenders or as a terrorist method of enforcing social domination." But sadly, the human race has probably invented more forms of violence than good paintings. Thus, that sentence is also vague.

So the US page offers some suggestions as to what it might be, this page offers the fact that it is temporally old, violent, and punishing. My question is WHAT IS IT that is old, violent and punishing? Honestly, I always thought that Lynching was when someone was tied to a tree and whipped or when the bindings (of person to tree) were made so tight that it crushed a person. So obviously I don't know either or I would fix it myself.

So, could someone please say what Lynching is FIRST, and then add the incidental attributes of why it exists, for how long, what it is used for, etc. I thought that was the goal of an encyclopedia. Saudade7 11:23, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

• I added info from the OED, hope that's okay. Saudade7 11:49, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jena Six

I trimmed back a mention of the Jena Six although I doubt it really belongs here at all. Lynching in the United States, maybe. There is a school of thought that says to wait until it drops out of the headlines, though (I guess on the theory that otherwise new editors will just keep re-adding it). Kingdon 05:21, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lynching not international under that title

I agree with those who say the term lynching has been most associated with the United States (at least for the last 150 years or more). It doesn't seem to work as an article that is purportedly international with that as the title. Lynching can be likened to pogroms, but I don't think pogroms were a form of lynching; that is, lynching isn't the super title.

Both were a form of imposed community justice or policing that arose in traditional societies, most often against outlier individuals or groups considered a threat to the social order. Outbreaks of violent mob action often occurred when communities were under stress. The victim(s) was a scapegoat for community anxieties. When the action (or murder) took place, "order" was restored, all members of the community were theoretically warned about what the community would tolerate in terms of behavior, even though the behavior being "punished" was often on trumped up charges.

As the definition notes, in England and Europe, and earlier times in the US, actions sometimes consisted of tarring and feathering, and/or forcing a person to ride a rail. It was called "rough music" or "charivari" in England and Italy. The latter term changed to "shivaree" in the US South. In his Southern Honor: Ethics & Behavior in the Old South(1982), Bertram Wyatt-Brown covers much of the history - or occurrence in most societies. The British historian E.P. Thompson also studied rough music and charivari in traditional British communities. Often young men led the group or mob's action. Sometimes they were directed at a person's sexual behavior, including remarriages by widows which sometimes the community thought inappropriate, or "loose" behavior by certain people. I'll add more, but think an article called "Lynching" should only be focused on the US.

I agree with those who do not think that the examples that have arisen during outright war (the Blackwater guards) are appropriate to include in this article, although the mutilations share the ritualistic nature of many of the US lynchings.

The story of the Jena Six doesn't belong here. Lynching history is background to their story, but I don't think it should be considered a contemporary example. --Parkwells 01:17, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lynching was not Ethnic cleansing

I don't think lynching should be conflated with ethnic cleansing. It was bad enough as it was. The latter is usually a higher level action, in the sense of a government or quasi-governmental body trying to kill or push out a large group of people (as in the Germans' initiated Holocaust against the Jews, Rwanda, the break-up of Yugoslavia).

Lynching was usually something that arose within a smaller community, where a mob reasserted the control of the majority over the minority. In the South it was about majority whites "restoring" control over the freedmen. They weren't trying to kill them all or get them to leave; the whites wanted to control the freedmen's lives and labor. Lynching had its roots in community policing, as anthropologists and historians named it, tracing it to milder forms of community and village control, like tarring and feathering. It usually took place in a community where people knew each other.--Parkwells 15:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you have not studied the history of lynching as many lynch mobs were indeed led by elected leaders. I see a real problem in this article with the absence of citations, the filling in of what one believes as opposed to what sources say. Skywriter 15:46, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I didn't write most of this article, and don't think it has sufficient material to be an international article on lynching. It cites only a few 20th-21st century examples of lynchings in other countries--Parkwells 22:21, 11 November 2007 (UTC).

Giving lynching the cover of "community policing" provides an undeserved excuse. Got sources who claim lynching is "community policing"? Skywriter 15:49, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

"Lynch mobs formed to restore the perceived social order"[1]Princeton historian Nell Irvin Painter (another editor had this citation in the "Lynching in the US" article.)

To say that lynching was not the same as ethnic cleansing was not meant to condone lynching. All I meant was that it was not the same thing - most lynching actions did not satisfy the conditions of ethnic cleansing as defined and described in the Wikipedia article, and as I understood the term. I think the various Indian wars and Indian removal actions by the US government and military did constitute ethnic cleansing. Whites in the South didn't want to get rid of African Americans; they wanted to control them and to keep them socially dominated; they wanted to control their labor and force them back on the plantations after the Civil War. In the early 1900's, when African Americans started migrating north in great numbers, planters often tried to stop them.--Parkwells 22:21, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

"People's courts" go further back than the 19th or 20th c. among all traditional societies. I'm not saying they were right. The historian Bertram oh yeah -Brown used a synthesis of work on "community policing" (p.440) Southern Honor: Ethics & Behavior in the Old South. Anthropologists and historians documented community policing back to Neolithic Europe, mostly in the form of crowd action that included public whipping, tar-and-feathering and burning in effigy. I put some of this discussion above in the Talk Page. I meant to show how the actions arose in the community and were related - yes, lynching proceeded to murder, both in the South and in frontier areas.

Wyatt-Brown placed the mob killings of lynchings as the "community control of custom against social change" in the post-Civil War era. It was about power relationships - whites terrorized blacks to keep or restore the power they had lost during the war. Wyatt-Brown identified three factors of white rule by charivari (crowd actions such as tarring-and-feathering, or whipping, short of murder) and lynching/lynch law (436): 1) the acquiescence, and sometimes the leadership, of those with social and official power. 2) Rituals to shame or kill those defined as deviants or threatening the social order. 3)The event satisfied the murderers and spectators that they had reinforced their order over misconduct and threats, real or imagined. That's why there was often spectacle and postcards made - they wanted people to know what had been done. --Parkwells 21:07, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

These rituals to kill those identified as social deviants were similar to those that arose in necklacing in South Africa, although the latter arose as blacks against blacks. I'll add more later. The British historian E. P. Thompson studied the rise of the English working class and methods of community control in villages. Wyatt-Brown borrowed from his work, but both were looking at deeper origins of such practices than the 19th c. South. I'm not trying to excuse them. --Parkwells 16:33, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

What is the evidence of 'people's courts' prior to lynchings of blacks by white mobs in the U.S.? Skywriter 16:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Pogroms in Europe in which Christian mobs killed Jews occurred in Germany, central/eastern Europe for centuries, as the Yivo website documents, not just in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Witch killings and burnings were another European form of "people's courts" or "community justice".

Also this article is not about public whippings or tar and feathering.Skywriter 16:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I had been working on the Lynching in the US article, too, in which someone else had noted tarring and feathering, and burning in effigy, preceded lynching. Both the earlier frontier conditions, fears by the white minority in black majority states (pre-war lynchings had often arisen on rumors of slave insurrections), and the aftermath of Civil War probably contributed to the murderous violence of lynchings.

The early 1900's had a different constellation of factors in some of the urban riots, that went beyond lynchings. In his "The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930" (1967/1992), the historian Kenneth Jackson examined reasons for the rise of the Klan in the cities in the late 1910s-1920s: there was social tension and volatility due to great influx of new European immigrants, and in some cities, such as Detroit, both white and black rural migrants from the South. They competed for housing, jobs and social territory. As was noted in the article, black veterans expected to be treated decently, but some whites were alarmed by their new confidence and assertiveness.

In Chicago, as in the Civil War draft riots in NY, it was mostly Irish mobs who attacked blacks. In Chicago, it was Irish Southside gangs (not whites in general) who started and continued attacks against blacks, who also lived on the Southside and also worked in the stockyards - so they were direct competitors).

Another editor noted riots in some areas growing out of job actions where blacks had been hired as strikebreakers. Strikebreakers were often attacked and killed in areas where race wasn't a factor, too. Workers felt their livelihood and lives threatened by strikebreakers.--Parkwells 21:07, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

While there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Irish in NY and Chicago, and the Scotch-Irish in the South, (who made up the bulk of European migrations at certain times in the 19th century), did indeed participate in racist mob activity, I am not sure any historian has drilled down to determine which particular white ethnicities were responsible (or mostly responsible) for lynchings and threats of lynchings in Sundown Towns which were and to some extent, according to Loewen, still are white-only turf where blacks found after sundown were lynched. So that is a direct form of ethnic cleansing. The Pulitzer prize winning historian Leon Litwack addresses this too.

That black workers were last hired and first fired in northern factories, even after fleeing the South for their lives, and yes, in Chicago in 1919 (Tuttle) the issue of strike-breaking does arise. And the issue was that labor unions all over the North and Midwest presented barriers to black employment in unions where union jobs were handed down from father to son, and to no one else. In those cases where blacks were barred from employment, the Chicago Defender and the Urban League advised against strike-breaking but also not to agree to be segregated into separate unions.

All of those killed in the Irish draft riots in NYC during the Civil War were black, many of them children, and most of those killed in Chicago were black. And while we're on the subject of ethnic cleansing, we haven't even begun to address the post Civil War plans to send blacks back to Africa, an alternative to lynching that is also a form of ethnic cleansing.Skywriter 23:03, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that most of the victims of those riots were black, but disagree on the intent as ethnic cleansing. Also, while in the post-Civil War era there were some politicians who had ideas that African Americans should be "repatriated", this was not a major movement in terms of numbers relocated. That would seem a different topic. Yes, I know, some African Americans did go to Africa, but most did not.--Parkwells 22:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lynching not 'most often' murder

To suggest that lynching is 'most often' murder is to dismiss the myriad other forms which include persistent verbal and continual physical assaults that may, but do not always, culminate in the unlawful execution of the victim. Therefore the last edit is factually inaccurate. There are many methods of performing lynching other than merely hanging or unlawfully executing a victim.KDACAPELLA 16:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a POV that ignores the history as well as the dictionary definitions of the term. The most egregious lynchings were murder. To cloud over that in a wave of legalese is to split hairs and to take the emphasis off of the simple fact that thousands of people were murdered.Skywriter 17:20, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

...What is most egregious is to ignore that for centuries people have endured persistent harassment as vigilantes attempt to use semantics to wrangle their way out of lawful courtrooms and into the streets to perpetrate their unjustifiable notion of justice.KDACAPELLA 17:26, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I feel your pain, though I also see that you are a talking about a different subject than the topic of this article. You seem to be trying to impose the other subjects on the lead of this article, the subject of which is lynching. Bringing in extraneous subjects into the lead of this article muddies the very specific subject of lynching, which is murder, plain and simple.

http://onelook.com/?w=lynching&ls=a lynching # noun: putting a person to death by mob action without due process of law

and in Merriam Webster, the dictionary most often used in the publishing industry:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=lynch Main Entry lynch Function transitive verb Etymology lynch law Date 1836

definition-- to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal sanction — lynch·er noun

And by the way, your long definition cites no sources. Would you agree to substitute the definition provided by historian Leon Litwack? He has written more about lynching than the next 10 million people.

Skywriter 17:31, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Correction-- what you added is fine. What you subtracted is not fine-- that lynching is murder by mob. That you linked to the FBI as the first link is problematic because the FBI has a long history of not enforcing civil rights laws and failed also to take lynching cases to prosecution. See --The FBI and the KKK: A Critical History by Michael Newton (McFarland & Co Inc Pub: 2005) See also-- Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South by John Egerton (Alfred a Knopf Inc: 1994) ISBN 0679408088. A history of the Southern men and women, black and white alike, who led the battle for civil rights prior to the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision. "The most shocking terrorist act of 1951 took place on Christmas night in Mims, Florida, a little town east of Orlando. Harry T. Moore, a school-teacher and state director of the NAACP, died with his wife, Harriette, when a bomb planted under their house exploded. An FBI investigation turned up several suspects, but no one was ever prosecuted in the case. Almost forty years later, a former marine and Ku Klux Klansman told NAACP officials that he and other Klansmen had conspired with law enforcement officials to plan and carry out the murder.... According to a subsequent report from the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of forty black Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some, like Harry Moore, were social activists whose work exposed them to danger, but most were either people who had refused to bow to racist convention, or were simply innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random white terrorism." p. 562-563 [Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South by John Egerton]

See also-- http://www.rickross.com/reference/kkk/kkk87.html (another empty FBI claim)

See also-- http://www.onlineathens.com/1998/051798/0517.a11moores.html which says-- "very living thing is respected." Those killed that terrible day were Roger Malcom, 24, Dorothy Malcom, 20, George Dorsey, 28, and Mae Murray Dorsey, 23. George Dorsey was a World War II veteran. The men responsible for the deaths were never arrested, although President Harry Truman ordered the FBI to investigate."

Or, as recently as this-- http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/14/fbi_reexamines_46_lynchings_by_white_mob/

Maybe you raise a good point. There should be a section in this article on how the FBI fails to pursue lynching cases. Skywriter 17:47, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Lynching refers to more than only killing. There is pattern to the violence perpetrated by hate groups which evolves and escalates. Groups gather, identify themselves and define their agenda, disparage their victim, taunt their victim, attack their victim with and without weapons, and ultimately attempt to destroy their victim. In the USA it is common for lynch mobs or hate groups to, in the early stages of attack, utilize 'signs' to communicate their violent intentions to their victims including the burning of crosses, the hanging of nooses, and other identifiable symbols like swastikas.KDACAPELLA 18:04, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Those actions do not constitute lynching. You're writing above about other hate crimes that may be related, but do not constitute lynching. Don't confuse what is already a complicated topic. If you want to write about hate crimes, do that separately. Yes, the KKK committed hate crimes that preceded or included actions other than lynching. That's not the point of an article about lynching. --Parkwells 23:02, 12 November 2007 (UTC)--Parkwells 23:07, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

KDACAPELLA, it appears that you are defining hate crimes of which lynching can be one. But all of what you describe need not be present for there to be a lynching. The definition of hate crimes ought not be the lead in the article about lynching. This is an error in logic. Two things are in play here. One is the presentation of original research, which does violate Wikipedia guidelines. And the second is the application of explanations that describe something other than the subject of this article. The simple dictionary definition of what lynching is suffices, and it is clear. There is no point in mucking up the definition. And, having failed so miserably to do their job with regard to lynchings, offering the FBI as your sole authoritative source is unpersuasive.Skywriter 00:56, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ??Only killing??

Murder is the ultimate in dissing someone. The material you describe is included in this article and in the related article that focuses on lynching in the united states. Have you read either article through? Skywriter 18:48, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The material added to the beginning of the article only confuses things and makes the definition meaningless. Lynching IS defined as killing. Yes, there are other hate crimes that may lead up to and include lynching, but "cross burning" and other aspects discussed, do not constitute lynching, and are not defined as such in the FBI website, either. --

Parkwells 22:46, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The FBI does not define either history or language. Yes, the most common definition of lynching and the one that should be given prominence in this article is an extralegal execution conducted by a white mob, but historically it does have a broader definition than is now usual, and it is still used in some laws, such as those of South Carolina in the broader context. To totally eliminate such mentions is not acceptable. Caerwine Caer’s whines 01:37, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Careful with your "white mob" definition. Blacks (and others) also committed lynchings and (whisper it 'cause it ain't politically correct) blacks lynched whites and were then found innocent in an open trial with a white judge, prosecutor, and jury. The degree of racism (in ANY direction) is really, really open to interpretation.67.161.166.20 (talk) 20:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Let's start with the dictionary definition which is clear and concise. There is a separate article on the US, in which you can drill down to the Carolinas if you like. Also no one totally eliminated the mentions to which you refer. Those are fully described in the article. Have you read it through?Skywriter 02:52, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

...Which dictionary?KDACAPELLA 14:08, 13 November 2007 (UTC) In 1912, Paul Walton Black published an extensive analysis of lynching, defining lynching as Ohio legislators did similarly in 1896 in an anti-lynching law: "Any collection of individuals assembled for any unlawful purpose intending to do damage or injury to anyone, or pretending to exercise correctional power over persons by violence, and without authority of law, shall for the purpose of this act be regarded as a ‘mob,' and any act of violence exercised by them upon the body of any person, shall constitute a ‘lynching."KDACAPELLA 14:53, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

When referring to lynching, the definition employed by recent southern historians in the USA is that of 'collective violence' which has consistency across regions.KDACAPELLA 15:04, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] succinctness

A volume of text has been edited out yet the article is still lacking in brevity and necessary information. Edit wars serve noone.

As a hate crime lynching does include the development of the crime through the the seven stages of the hate model as defined by the FBI.http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:K-ALDOQfOVwJ:www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2003/mar2003/mar03leb.htm+fbi+seven+stage+hate+model&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=usKDACAPELLA 23:28, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful if you take a look at some material relating to crime as structured action: "Crime As Structured Action: Gender, Race, Class, and Crime in the Making" By Dr James W Messerschmidt To lynch, one of the first things required, but not necessarily the very first, is to gather together a lynch mob. It may be necessary beforehand to put forth a good reason to gather a lynch mob. Slander or propaganda is a way to start. There is much more to lynching than putting a rope around some poor unfortunate's neck. There's a method to the madness. And it follows some rather well defined stages as put forth in the FBI's seven stage hate model.

If you're genuine in your desire to compose a good article about lynching, perhaps a little research into how lynch mob's operate outside legal sanction, how they develop their values, beliefs, and agendas, how they define the target, how they stage the scene, how they terrorize, torment, and otherwise torture the target before ultimately attempting to destroy ... and how it is that hate crimes have for so long gone not only unpunished but unrecognized not just in the USA, but all over the world.KDACAPELLA 14:32, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Ignoring the fact that your comment is patronizing ("If you're genuine in your desire to compose a good article..."), may I suggest that you add Messerschmidt's book to the reference section, summarize it and add the summary to this article. Making it the lead without even referencing it is not the best idea posted on this board.Skywriter 15:12, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

None of what

...The book was added to the reference section. Perhaps that is what you're ignoring. Your attempt to narrowly define lynching as merely extrajudicial execution is disregardig the complexity of the crime, its various manifestations over time in different locations, and the accepted definition by recent historians in the southern USA which has consistency over regions.KDACAPELLA 15:27, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Please provide examples of lynchings that did not result in murder, and also show that these near-killings were of a greater number than lynchings that resulted in death. This question arises from the fact that you insist on taking the fact of murder out of the lead of this article.

Please justify also why a reprise of a century old definition based on an obscure law in Ohio by a graduate student who wasn't heard from after he wrote that article should be the lead in this article?

Please explain also why the geographical origin of any historian offers more insight into lynching than Leon Litwack?

Please explain why the comments of an obscure graduate student who wrote a paper while a doctoral student [5] compares to the research done by someone of the stature of Leon Litwack, who has written extensively on lynchings and the history of racism in the US.

As a graduate student in 1910, Paul Walton Black researched lynchings in the state of Iowa where there were and still are very few black people. Most of the examples he documents are of white lynchings. Evidence is overwhelming that the vast number of lynchings took place in the United States, or, as Black points out "The phenomenon of lynching is distinctively American an probably had its origin in the United States in the latter par of the eighteenth century." [6]

Please explain why research on lynchings in Iowa trumps the research of Ida B. Wells? There is much to document the breadth and scope of her knowledge and research on this subject and very little on Mr. Black who seems to have dropped out of scholarly history after writing his student paper on lynching.

Now let's take a look at Mr. Pfeifer, who has written one book only [7] and you revert to him several times as follows: "Lynching can be defined as "the harsh, informal, and often communal punishment of perceived criminal behavior."[1]

Let's parse this--the "can be defined" non-definition --"the harsh, informal, and often communal punishment of perceived criminal behavior"-- does not begin to address the thousands of murders that resulted from lynchings all across the United States from Reconstruction through the first 68% of the 2oth century.

Why are you watering down "murder" to "perceived criminal behavior"?

Why do you reject the dictionary definitions that lynching is killing?

The substitution of "can be defined" for what the subject of this article is -- is unacceptable, and does not get to the heart of the matter. Lynching is murder by a mob.

You have twice reverted fact that lynching is murder by a mob, and replaced it with a sentence that says what lynching "can be". You also quote from an obscure state law. This is not a class in Ohio law. Or Iowa history. The subject is broader than that.

I do not accept the definition you have twice reverted to, and ask that you withdraw it. In the absence of withdrawing it, a dispute tag can be placed at page top for all of the reasons stated here. Skywriter 16:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definition

I agree with your suggestion that the definition be withdrawn or that a dispute tag be added. We need to rely on major historians whose work is peer reviewed. The article contains plenty of data that shows that lynching has larger aspects. The FBI site was devised for a different purpose - to detail behavior that leads to lynching and to define a variety of hate crimes, for the purpose of prosecution, understanding and prevention. --Parkwells 17:09, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

To lead with a definition talking about "perceived criminal action" is just plain wrong; I don't care if it was the law in Ohio in 1896. As the article discusses and numerous researchers and historians have shown, whites lynched blacks more for social infractions, such as trying to vote, approaching a white woman or not being submissive enough, getting successful economically, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, not just for alleged crimes. That definition, despite the fact that it was a law, was not accurate in 1896, and is less accurate given what we've learned since then.--Parkwells 19:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questionable material

Why are the photographs displayed? Not only is it violation of copyright but it is contemptuous and demonstrative of an utter lack of respect to the victims and their families.KDACAPELLA 16:55, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Objections to the photos, including their copyright violation, have been posted, so maybe it's time to delete them. Some people seem to think they are needed so people understand. I don't.--Parkwells 17:11, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article weighted too heavily to US definitions and situations

This article is weighted down too heavily with one lengthy definition after another, too many examples from US history, a digression on hate crimes, and barely any historical perspective for any other country. There is a separate article on "Lynching in the Unites States". I think this has gotten so unwieldy as to be almost useless, and it is certainly does not have the character of an encyclopedia. --Parkwells (talk) 20:07, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Richard Llewellyn in his novel "How Green Was My Valley", set in Wales in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, describes an incident that fits every definition of a lynching: a child is murdered, the locals decide, naturally, that the murderer must be a member of the small English community in that mining community and form a mob to invade it. They drag a man out of his house, find blood stains and inconsistencies in his story and forthwith execute him and form a wall of silence when the "outsider" police come to investigate. Have there actually been such cases so recently in Britain? I have often heard it stated that lynching is totally unknown there.ªªªª

[edit] Lead is too long

The lead is too long and weighted too heavily to the US. More detailed material about US legislation should go lower in the article. The lead is supposed to be only 3 or 4 short paragraphs, an overview of what the article is about.--Parkwells (talk) 23:07, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Colfax Massacre and Race Riots

This is usually classified as racial violence related to partisan politics rather than a lynching, since it was an organized, paramilitary Democratic white militia that attacked the African Americans. In a similar way, the race riots in 1919-1920 were in a different category than typical lynchings, and have separate articles. --Parkwells (talk) 19:36, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Civil rights and the color of law

I don't see how this ties in with the rest of the article. Neither the word "lynch" nor "execution" appears anywhere in this section, nor anything close. It seems perfectly suited to an article on civil rights, but since lynching has victims of all races, I think we need a better tie to keep this section here. CsikosLo (talk) 17:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Clarence Thomas Why is that that one of the links goes back to him, high tech lynching disambiguation does not make sense doesn't make sense to me i am not a registered user, can someone edit it for me —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.137.166.187 (talk) 17:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with the Lead

The lead focuses too much on the Dyer Bill and US law, rather than a general description of lynching in societies that relates to the rest of the article. The sentences thrown in about "imperialist aggression" don't relate to the rest of the lead or much of the article. It does not explain in which country the Emancipation Act of 1833 occurred - obviously not the US, but how did that relate to violence? If the Dyer Bill is going to be discussed, then it should be explained briefly about why it didn't pass - the Solid South, white Democrats, prevented this and similar legislation by their actions in the SEnate, and they could accomplish that because they had effectively disfranchised African Americans at the turn of the century. All this should go below in the narrative, however, not in the lead, unless the article were about the Dyer Bill.--Parkwells (talk) 12:12, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with everything you say here. Put the Dyer bits into a sub-section, the article should be on lynching as a whole. Ashmoo (talk) 14:25, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] White/Caucasian.

I had to change "Caucasian" to white in reference to the racial makeup of a lynch mob mentioned in this article. Unless anyone has a reliable source that says this was a gang of Azerbaijanis, I suggest we keep it that way and remember that Caucasian is a term with a very specific geo-cultural meaning and is not a euphemism for "of European descent". Wormwoodpoppies (talk) 16:53, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

There is no reason that Caucasian should refer only to people from the Caucasus. The term Caucasian race refers to the "race" of people once believed to originate in the Caucasus. This is the way the term is commonly used. That said, it is still true that this is not the same as white, since Caucasian is a much broader term that encompasses several skin colors. Eebster the Great (talk) 08:32, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV Phrasing

"Lynching during the late 19th century in the United States, Great Britain and colonies, coincided with a period of high imperialistic violence and religious-inspired protest which denied people participation in white-dominated society on the basis of race or gender after the Emancipation Act of 1833.[6]"

White-dominated? The society in question is white. I suggest a rephrasing to this effect. Mortician103 (talk) 02:08, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

You're asserting there were no non-white people in the society that was the 19th century United States and also GB and the colonies (disregarding your verb tense problem). Please try to contribute more constructively. Toddst1 (talk) 05:36, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

By the time lynching came about in America, slavery was long abolished and any sort of white domination ended. The segregation policies at the time were implemented to insure that white societies and black societies stayed separate. I would not call a town built by whites, maintained by whites and populated by whites a white-dominated society. Calling it so is not NPOV. Mortician103 (talk) 06:01, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

This is not a forum for what you would call things. Cite reliable sources for your opinions. Toddst1 (talk) 06:18, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

NPOV debates can boil down to semantics. This is an extremely minor change for the sake of NPOV. Changing "White-dominated society" to "White society" would have the same effect without implying some sort of racial hegemony which didn't exist due to segregation policies. Also, Selective prosecution Mortician103 (talk) 06:39, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

And your source for this lack of hegemony? Toddst1 (talk) 14:55, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology

An editor reinserted patently false etymologies after I edited them out because apparently we do not know the actual etymology. I point out this article which shows that we do in fact know where it comes from, or at least that one or more of the stories just aren't true. If no one responds I shall edit accordingly. Bnynms (talk) 09:22, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree to the point "apparently we do not know the actual etymology." I can point out Words and names‎ by Ernest Weekle, Lynch-Law by James Elbert, and we have so many others with differing views. Thanks to the Google books, we can see a number of different views and I knew that it is controversy for more than a century. Actually my point is that there is not a firm definite answer to the etymology of lynch law or lynching, or at least it is not to what Wikipedia intends. I'm not the only one to question Virginian lynch is THE etymology and everything else is false. I think that describing both sides would be a good way to maintain the neutrality. Worldwidewaffle (talk) 10:37, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

The first source agrees with mine that the Galway story is a complete falsehood. The Chinese one is equally dubious. How could such a definition spread from China to the US (or anywhere) to become so widespread? Michael Quinion, the webmaster for world wide words is a respected etymologist. I can find nothing on the authors of the books you have provided. Having blatantly untrue material on here is a disservice to an encyclopaedia. Bnynms (talk) 20:11, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Media lynching

I've heard of the expression media lynching that describes certain situations in which the media behaves in ways that resemble the behavior of a raging mob. It could perhaps be added to the article as a peculiar colloquialism related to lynching in general. [8] [9] [10] [11] ADM (talk) 11:41, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Lynchings of whites

"Between 1882 and 1968, the Tuskegee Institute recorded 1,293 lynchings of whites." The number seems plausible, but it certainly needs citation. Also, the article should probably make clear, and doesn't, that all of these were lynchings of whites by whites. - Jmabel | Talk 04:09, 22 November 2009 (UTC)