A shocking new report has found that there were nearly four thousand lynchings of black people in the Jim Crow-era South, hundreds more than was previously estimated.
The report was put together by the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit group that provides legal assistance to the poor and homeless. They studied the number of lynchings documented during the Jim Crow era—roughly 1877 to 1950—and counted 3,959 lynchings of black people, about 700 more than had been assumed. Most of lynchings took place due to a black person breaking some sort of unwritten rule of conduct like accidentally running into a white woman or sitting down in a bar where black people were not allowed. Some of the lynchings took place because a black person was accused of a crime. In no case was there a trial, or even a charge.
Georgia and Mississippi had the most lynchings, with 586 and 576, respectively. Bryan Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, and says he now plans to encourage communities to erect memorials at locations where lynchings occurred …
