ABSTRACT
The lynching of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction South assumed a variety of forms. This chapter discusses the two main forms of lynchings: "public" lynchings and "private" lynchings. Public lynchings were collective intergroup violence because they marshaled broad communal perpetrator and spectator participation and support, and received much attention in southern public sphere. A ceremonial feature of public lynchings with clear symbolic meanings reducing black victims and their racial group to an inferior status was the occasional burning ritual. The chapter examines how common private lynchings of African Americans were in Georgia and Louisiana from 1882 to 1930. Private lynch mobs were sometimes composed of white landlords, employers, and their companions aiming to settle labor disputes with black tenants and workers by violent means. Members of private vigilante lynch mobs were consequently not only more likely than members of other mobs to be publicly denounced but also, though a rare occurrence, to face legal prosecutions and punishments for their deeds.
