ABSTRACT
In the last decades of the nineteenth century lynching became an institutionalized mode of social control, used against both whites and blacks in both the North and the South. The selection by Guzman details instances of collective violence against individuals by year, race, state, and alleged cause, for the period 1882-1951. In some instances alleged crimes of individual Negroes were generalized to a characterization of a criminal black community; in others, causation was considerably complex and reflected political disputes among whites as well as resentment against a growing Negro middle class. The chapter describes two riots, one in Atlanta and one in Springfield, Illinois. The conditions which led up to the rioting in Springfield grew out of bad politics. The seeds of mob violence were sown, not when the first Negroes came to Springfield, but when municipal rottenness fertilized the lower strata of society.
