Rooted in the broader tradition of vigilantism, the word lynching is primarily associated with the killing of African Americans by white mobs from the Civil War to the late twentieth century. At the height of lynchings in the United States, between 1882 and 1956, more than 4,700 men, women, and children were killed, about 80 percent of them black. In particular, lynching became an integral part of social control in the South, where whites sought to maintain their traditional authority and deny African Americans basic political, social, and economic freedoms. Although the practice declined in the face of gains made during and after the Civil Rights era, occasional lynchings continued up to the turn of the twenty-first century.

Lynching originated in Bedford County, Virginia, around the time of the Revolutionary War when Colonel Charles Lynch and other white males organized informally to apprehend and punish Tories and other lawless elements. The term...