Public Punishment: An Event History Analysis of Executions and Lynchings, 1883-1939

• In Event: Death Sentences and Executions in the U.S., Past and Present

Abstract

The relationship between historical capital punishment and lynching between the late 18th and early 20th centuries remains hotly contested, despite being the focus of extensive scholarly inquiry. The widely conflicting results reported in the literature on the subject could be attributed to limitations of current theoretical models and extant quantitative analyses of the link between these different forms of lethal social control. In this paper, I seek to address these issues by re-examining the relationship between lynchings and executions of African Americans in Southern states during the Lynching Era, with an eye toward how different capital punishment methods and practices may influence the relationship. Using county level data from former Confederate States between 1883 and 1939, I test whether capital punishment practices influence the likelihood of a lynching occurring in a county, and whether that association is different for public and private executions through a series of Cox proportional hazard models. The results of these analyses shed light on the connections between lynching and historical capital punishment as well as competing methods of social control more broadly.

Author

• Julia Teresa Thomas, University of Wisconsin-Madison