Female Lynchings in the United States

• Date: 01 October 2012
• Published date: 01 October 2012
• DOI: 10.1177/2153368712459272
• Author: David Victor Baker
• Subject Matter: Articles

Female Lynchings in the

United States: Amending

the Historical Record

David Victor Baker

1

Abstract

Justice scholars have failed to distinguish an accurate historical record of female

lynchings in the United States. Most probably, one reason for this lapse in the lynching

scholarship is that researchers lack the fact-based information required to document

troubling narratives of women irrevocably harmed by mob violence. It is impractical

for researchers to bring into sharper focus the fiendish torture women suffered from

vigilantism without a reliable historical record of confirmed female lynchings. The

present work provides an inventory of 179 confirmed cases of women and young girls

murdered at the hands of mostly White terrorists from 1835 to 1965. It is equally

important, however, to distinguish 57 cases of unconfirmed and factually inaccurate

female lynchings that directly challenge the reliability of existing registries. The present

work remedies inaccuracies in these inventories with more historically precise narra-

tives of misidentified cases.

Keywords

social control theory, criminological theories, violence against women, national crime

victimization survey (NCVS) 120, lynching, race and death penalty, female

delinquency, race and juvenile justice, race/ethnicity, interracial crime, victimization

Introduction

Social historian Joel Williamson (1997) has criticized the study of lynching in the

United States as ‘‘strangely disjointed and discontinuous’’ (p. 1252). Though scholars

have recently intensified their academic interest in lynchings and established a more

robust research record (Cook, 2011), there remains erratic and fragmented treatment

1

Riverside City College, Riverside, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

David Victor Baker, Riverside City College, 4800 Magnolia Avenue, Riverside, CA 92509, USA

Email: david.baker@rcc.edu

Race and Justice

2(4) 356-391

ªThe Author(s) 2012

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DOI: 10.1177/2153368712459272

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of the contextual history of female lynchings. The persecution of American women

through mob violence has rarely demanded much more than minor postscripts in the

lynching scholarship. What is more, significant error challenges the reliability of what

little attention scholars have presented on the history of female lynchings in the United

States (McLure, 2011). It is impractical for researchers to document the compelling

history of women irrevocably harmed by mob violence without a reliable research

record. The present work corrects for imprecisions in the lynching record of American

women (Laska, 2007).

Compiling an Inventory of Female Lynchings

The first step to compiling an inventory of female lynchings in the United States

involved building a master list of female lynchings from the tabulated data of existing

lynching inventories. Table 1 lists the registries used to assemble the master list of

female lynchings (Cook, 2011), though most of the cases included in the master list

derived from inventories made up entirely of female lynchings, namely, DeLongoria

(2006), Feimster (2009), O’Shea (1999), and Segrave (2010). A major shortcoming of

these particular registries, however, is that they noticeably draw from earlier data

sources that scholars have challenged as grossly inaccurate; that is, the NAACP, the

Chicago Tribune, and lynching data from Tuskegee University. Tolnay and Beck

(1995) explain, for instance, that these primary data sources ‘‘are so flawed that sole

reliance on them could possibly lead to misleading conclusions about the era’’

(p. 259). Indeed, factual oversights in the inventories of exclusively female lynchings

render the records so dubious that they directly challenge the accuracy of the historical

narratives accompanying the inventories (McLure, 2011).

The second step to compiling an accurate inventory of female lynchings was to

confirm, disconfirm, or unconfirm each lynching in the master list using digitized

archival newspaper stories and the academic sources listed in Table 1.

1

The present

study used a generally accepted definitional rubric to confirm, disconfirm, or

unconfirm female lynchings. Verification of a female lynching followed where factual

evidence revealed that a female victim had died unlawfully at the hands of persons

acting under a pretense of service to justice, race, or tradition (Carrigan, 2004; Eck-

berg, 2006; Tolnay & Beck, 1995; Waldrep, 1999, 2000, 2002).

Table 2 comprises 179 confirmed female lynchings verified by newspaper stories

or academic sources. The registry includes corrections to minor factual discrepancies

in female lynchings. Included also are women and young girls murdered in race riots

or mass killings; after all, as Myrdal (1944) explains, ‘‘Sometimes the killing and

beating of a large number of Negroes is called a riot: we prefer to call this a terror-

ization or massacre and consider it as a magnified, or mass, lynching’’ (p. 566).

2

Table

2 lists the name, age, race, place, and method of killing female lynching victims. The

registry also includes information on the race of lynch mob members and the alle-

gations or reasons for female lynchings.

Table 3 lists 57 unconfirmed (uncertain) female lynchings not verified by a

newspaper story or academic source. The list also includes disconfirmed (inaccurate)

Baker 357

Table 1. Tabulated Data Sources Used to Compile Female Lynching Inventory

Academic

resources

of female lynching

data

States represented

in tabulated

lynching data

Historical period

of lynching data

Number of

lynchings denoted

in the source

Number of female

lynchings denoted

in the source

Initial sources

used to compile

tabulated data

Brundage (1993) Georgia, Virginia 1880–1930 546 10 Various sources

Carrigan (2004) Central Texas 1835–1922 132 4 Newspapers & other

sources

DeLongoria (2006)

(black women

only)

Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia,

South Carolina, North

Carolina, Tennessee,

Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas,

Texas, Virginia

1886–1957 199 153 Various sources

Feimster (2009) Alabama, Arkansas,California,

Colorado, Florida, Georgia,

Kentucky, Louisiana,

Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska,

Oklahoma, South Carolina,

Tennessee, Texas, Virginia,

West Virginia, Wyoming

1837–1965 169 169 Newspapers & Various

other sources

Frazier (2009) Missouri 1803–1981 229 2 Newspapers

Gonzales-Day

(2006)

California 1850–1935 352 1 Newspapers & various

other sources

Leonard (2002) Colorado 1859–1919 194 1 Newspapers & various

other sources

Moore (2006) South Carolina 1880–1947 186 9 Newspapers, Chicago

Tribune, NAACP &

other sources

Newkirk (2009) North Carolina 1865–1941 168 7 Various sources

(continued)

358