Rethinking lynching: Extralegal executions in postbellum Louisiana

Contemporary research on the lynching of African Americans in the postbellum South has emphasized its role in maintaining the racial supremacy of Whites over African Americans. We contend that, by itself, this racial domination model of lynching is inadequate to explain variation among lynchings or temporal changes in the characteristics of extralegal executions that occurred during the lynching era, circa 1880–1930. Analyzing a recently compiled enumeration of lynchings in Louisiana, we argue that a significant percentage of 19th‐century lynchings committed by both African Americans and Whites is better understood as a traditional type of “self‐help” justice (Black 1983). After 1900, however, informal execution in Louisiana became progressively more racist in its application, and African Americans virtually disappeared from the active ranks of lynch mob participants. Although the racial domination model successfully explains the majority of Louisiana lynchings in the 20th century, we conclude that extralegal execution as a form of social control served different purposes that varied over time and for various segments of the Southern population.