ABSTRACT
Reform efforts were grounded in a deep sense of injustice and a consequent withdrawal of legitimacy for practices then in place. The close linkage between contemporary patterns of capital punishment and lynching as a legacy of slavery was hard to miss and even harder to deny. It was most evident in cases involving a black offender, charged with raping or attempting to rape a white woman. A campaign to reform and then abolish existing capital-punishment practices was launched. Success was achieved when capital punishment, as then practiced, was declared unconstitutional. It was only a partial victory. Executions could continue if existing procedures were modified.
