The Transmission of Historical Racial Violence

• Author: Geoff Ward,Nick Petersen
• Date: 01 April 2015
• Published date: 01 April 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/2153368714567577
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Transmission

of Historical Racial

Violence: Lynching,

Civil Rights–Era Terror,

and Contemporary

Interracial Homicide

Nick Petersen

1

and Geoff Ward

2

Abstract

Research finds that historic racial violence helps predict spatial distributions of con-

temporary outcomes, including homicide. These findings underscore the continued

need to historicize modern race relations, yet intervening processes linking past

violence with present events remain unclear. This study examines these intermediary

mechanisms by reducing the century-long time-lapse common to legacy of racial

violence research. We use mid-century measures of violent opposition to the Civil

Rights Movement to bridge the historical gap between lynchings and later homicide,

thus clarifying the dynamic and contingent nature of the legacy of racial violence.

Structural equation models indicate that incidents of anti-civil rights enforcement and

contemporary homicides are more likely to occur in areas with pronounced histories

of lynching. Civil rights era assaults mediate the relationship between lynchings and

contemporary homicide generally, but not White-on-Black homicide, signaling a need

for further research documenting events of mid-century racial violence and clarifying

these and other sources of historical transmission. Implications for future research

and public policy are considered.

Keywords

subculture of violence, criminological theories, lynching, race and death penalty, hate/

bias crimes, victimization, homicides, interracial crime

1

University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

2

University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Nick Petersen, Department of Sociology, University of Miami, 5202 University Drive, Coral Gables, FL

33146, USA.

Race and Justice

2015, Vol. 5(2) 114-143

ªThe Author(s) 2015

Reprints and permission:

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DOI: 10.1177/2153368714567577

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Civil rights laws and reforms are often envisioned as ushering in a ‘‘post-civil

rights’’ period, removed from an earlier history of violent race relations, if still

shaped by subtler forms of racial conflict and inequality (Bobo, Kluegel, & Smith,

1997; Bonilla-Silva, 2001). Yet a growing body of scholarship finds that lynching,

the form of racial violence most characteristic of this seemingly bygone era, con-

tinues to influence contemporary patterns of violence, conflict, and inequality

(DeFina & Hannon, 2011; Jacobs, Carmichael, & Kent, 2005; Jacobs, Malone, &

Iles, 2012; King, Messner, & Baller, 2009; Messner, Baller, & Zevenbergen, 2005;

Messner, Baumer, & Rosenfeld, 2006; Porter, Howell, & Hempel, 2014; Zimring,

2003). This evidence encourages us to historicize present-day racial inequality and

to clarify the intermediary processes linking this seemingly distant past to con-

temporary racial stratification and conflict.

This study examines linkages between the three forms of racial violence—historic

lynching, mid-century anti-civil rights violence, and contemporary White-on-Black

homicide—in two contrasting southern states. Existing research on the legacy of

lynching overlooks the violence surrounding the civil rights movement (CRM), yet

this mid-century era of racial terror may be an important cultural and institutional

conduit in the enduring significance of historic racial violence. This article empiri-

cally assesses this potential link.

The spatial congruence and functional equivalence of lynching and anti-civil rights

violence suggests likely relationships between these instantiations of racial terror and

later racial conflict and violence. Lynchings were most common in the same south-

eastern region of the United States that later became the primary battleground of the

CRM. These two forms of violence served similar functions as ‘‘terroristic social

control,’’ where spectacles of violence, intimidation, and reprisal aimed to manipulate

political behavior and maintain status quo race relations, albeit in different eras

(Tolnay & Beck, 1995, p. 19; Law, 2009, pp. 138–139). In so far as antecedents of

historic lynching and its legacy relate to causes and consequences of civil rights–era

racial violence (e.g., racial threat, racial socialization, or subcultures of violence), this

mid-century race terror may clarify sources of the enduring significance of historic

racial violence.

We expect anti-civil rights violence to be more prominent in contexts of not only

race-related economic and political contention but also where lynchings created

‘‘fertile soil’’ for its expression, perhaps through extreme racial socialization and the

cultural legitimization of racial violence (Tolnay & Beck, 1995). Yet, it is possible

that theorized local socialization effects of lynching are dampened or interrupted by

the prolonged absence of comparable, sustaining events. The discontinuity of ter-

roristic social control, such as an absence of anti-civil rights violence in locales once

scared by lynching, may give way to new ‘‘forces of habit’’ (Durso & Jacobs, 2013,

p. 130; Stinchcombe, 1987) which weaken the lasting significance of lynching and

limit later violence, even amid contention. In essence, a more inclusive historical

analysis of racial terror accounting for CRM-era violence should help to elucidate

intermediary processes underlying the legacy of lynching, clarifying the (dis)-

continuity of historical racial violence.

Petersen and Ward 115