Lynching and Social Time

• In Event: Macro and Historical Issues in Violence

Abstract

Thousands of people have been lynched in the United States. All lynchings are violent deaths, but some are more gruesome than others. The most aggravated lynchings involve macabre methods (e.g. burned at the stake, skinned alive), torture (e.g. branding, sexual assault), and post-mortem indignities (e.g. dismemberment, public display of remains). Can Donald Black’s (2011) theory of moral time explain variation in lynchings? To answer the question, we draw on Beck and Tolnay’s detailed public inventory of lynchings spanning Southern states from 1865 to present.

Authors

• Scott Phillips, University of Denver

• Mark Cooney, University of Georgia