Nearly 4,000 African Americans Were Lynched In One 73-Year Period
between 1877 and 1950, 3,959 African Americans were lynched — 700 more incidents than had ever been calculated before,
black lynchings in the South occurred when unsubstantiated suspicions arose about black involvement in white society, and when African Americans actively resisted racial subordination.
In 1904, a man named General Lee was accused of knocking on a white woman's door in Reevesville, South Carolina. He was lynched by a white mob.
When World War I veteran William Little refused to remove his army uniform in front of a group of white men in Blakely, Georgia, in 1919, he was also attacked and lynched by a mob.
When World War I veteran William Little refused to remove his army uniform in front of a group of white men in Blakely, Georgia, in 1919, he was also attacked and lynched by a mob.
Many of the lynchings were justified by suspicions and lacked hard evidence. Being found guilty of lynching was such a rarity that many of them were carried out in broad daylight, sometimes on the steps of courthouses
In 1919, Berry Noyse was accused of killing a sheriff in Lexington, Tennessee. According to the EJI report, "an angry mob lynched him in the courthouse square, dragged his body through the town, shot it dozens of times, and burned the body in the middle of the street below hung banners that read, 'This is the way we do our bit.'"
Lynchings were so widely accepted that they became cultural events for white spectators. In one 1904 case in Doddsville, Mississippi, Luther Holbert was suspected of killing a white man. Holbert and the woman assumed to be his wife were captured by a mob and tied to a tree, where white civilians were invited to cut their fingers and ears off.
As the victims were beaten and burned to death, onlookers are said to have been "enjoying deviled eggs, lemonade, and whiskey in a picnic-like atmosphere."
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