A New National Lynching Data Set and New Explanations for Lynching Behavior in the United States, 1684–1983

The determinants of racial violence, lynching, throughout the country have largely eluded researchers. Since lynching activity was present throughout the country, tests of lynching theory require data that can be used for the entire U.S. From a plethora of sources, I have constructed a new national database of individual lynching victims meeting the NAACP definition of lynching which spans 50 states and the District of Columbia and the years 1684 to 1983. To date, this is the most comprehensive data set of lynchings for the United States, including new information on gender, race, ethnicity, and national origin. Although a sizeable number were purged from the traditional historical data sets, the new national lynching data set increases the net number of recorded lynchings in the U.S. by 300 individuals (6 percent) for a total of 5,053 recorded lynchings. Using the new comprehensive data, I estimate the relation between lynchings and traditional proxies for economic competition, share nonwhite (or black) population and the literacy gap. I find that lynchings are strongly associated with larger concentrations of minority populations. I find that a doubling of the African American share of the population resulted in 51 more lynchings per decade. Unlike for other racial and ethnic groups, for African Americans an increase in the literacy gap – reflecting less economic competition – is associated with fewer lynchings. In addition, I find that lynchings are positively and strongly correlated with legal executions in the general population but not in the African American population. I conclude by describing how these results call for revising and testing theories of lynching to account for lynching outside the South and among various races and ethnic groups.