ABSTRACT
Three separate, but related, sets of policy initiatives emanated from the change in perspective: legal segregation, disfranchisement, and capital punishment. Each was intended to reduce racial violence and bring order to maintain legally the racial status quo. Segregation followed in the path of urbanization, growing population densities, and racial proximity, all of which heightened the potential for violence. In 1891, Texas Governor James S. Hogg explained that segregation was necessary to limit violent confrontations between insolent blacks and intolerant whites. Southern political leaders were convinced that segregation and disfranchisement were necessary to limit mob violence and to ensure some semblance of racial civility in that troubled region. Moreover, they may have been right. At the same time, however, they also understood that “legal lynching” was essential to indulge the dark fears and yearnings that still remained in their white constituents.
