ABSTRACT
The lynching epidemic, that began after the Civil War and accelerated during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and continued well into the twentieth. Lynching reflected a new era of violence, another way of expressing the same old hatreds and fears that had fueled racial animosities throughout Southern history. Before the end of the Civil War, lynching was primarily a frontier practice and its victims were usually white. Sociologists have attempted to discover the causes of lynching by statistically analyzing such data as demographic characteristics, election returns and economic cycles. But the inconclusive results of the studies suggest that lynching was not closely associated with census figures, voter preferences, or fluctuations in the business cycle. If one were to believe the words of Southern politicians and newspaper editors, rape—which accounts for just one quarter of the lynchings—was the reason for almost all of them.
