Variations in Vulnerability: Victims of Threatened, Attempted, and Completed Lynchings in Four Southern States

• In Event: 476 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Paper Session. Racial Formation and Mobilization in Comparative-Historical Perspective

Abstract

Recent historical scholarship has identified the characteristics that put southern black and mixed race men at risk of lynching (Bailey et. al. 2011, Bailey and Tolnay 2015). However, lethal violence is only the most severe manifestation of mob aggression. In addition to those who were killed by lynch mobs, an equal number were either publicly threatened, with no actual violence occurring, or able to survive an attempted lynching. We explore the dynamics of victimization by comparing the characteristics of people who were targeted with these varying levels of severity. This paper will compare the characteristics of people who were targeted as the intended victims of a threatened, attempted, and completed lynching. We use a newly-constructed dataset (still in process), which incorporates census data for hundreds of individuals who were threatened or survived an attempted lynching in four southern states (Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina) between 1882 and 1930. We combine these with information from the census records of people who were actually killed, to predict whether individual socioeconomic and demographic characteristics varied systematically with the level of victimization. Among those who were “merely” threatened, or who survived an attempted lynching, we also identify whether specific characteristics affected the likelihood that the state – most often the criminal justice system – would intervene to protect the intended target.

Authors

• Amy Kate Bailey, University of Illinois - Chicago

• Piere Washington, University of Illinois at Chicago