A Look at Lynching by the Numbers

The Confederate flag no longer flies

 at South Carolina's statehouse.

On the occasion of South Carolina’s removal of the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds, let's take a quick look at the history of lynching in this country. 

From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of this number, 72.7% of people lynched were black.

Nearly four out of five lynchings—79%—happened in the South. While most of the lynching that took place outside of the South was of whites, 86% of lynching in the southern states (those of the former Confederacy) happened to blacks. 

Mississippi had the most lynchings with 581. Georgia was second with 531, Texas third with 493, and Louisiana fourth with 391. Alaska, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut had no lynchings between 1882-1968.

South Carolina lynched 160 people during this period. 156 of them were black.

Pennsylvania had 8 lynchings. The last one—of Zachariah Walker, in 1911—was especially notorious. Walker was a black steelworker, dragged to a field outside of Coatesville and murdered by a mob. His death shocked the nation and led to the first federal anti-lynching law.

Note: The statistics quoted above are based on data from the Tuskegee Institute Archives.