lynching

form of mob violence in which a mob executes a presumed offender, often also torturing him and mutilating his body, without trial, under the pretext of administering justice. The term “lynch law” refers to a self-constituted court that imposes sentence on a person without due process of law. Both terms are derived from the name of Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter and patriot who, during the American Revolution, headed an irregular court formed to punish loyalists.

Vigilante justice has been practiced in many countries under unsettled conditions whenever informally organized groups have attempted to supplement or replace legal procedure or to fill the void where institutional justice did not yet exist. The fehmic courts of medieval Germany had some aspects of lynching, as did the gibbet law and Cowper justice of border districts in England. The Santa Hermandad institution in medieval Spain and pogroms directed against Jews in Russia and Poland were similar, though in these cases there was support from legally constituted authorities.

Statistics of reported lynching in the United States indicate that, between 1882 and 1951, 4,730 persons were lynched, of whom 1,293 were white and 3,437 were black. Lynching continued to be associated with racial disputes during the 1950s and '60s when civil rights workers and advocates were threatened and in some cases killed by mobs.