From 1865 to 1965 more than 6,000 African-Americans died in racial violence in the United States.

This inventory includes the names of 2400 of the African-Americans who were lynched in the United States from 1865 to 1965.

The inventory is necessarily incomplete. Records are scant. Newspaper reports are scattered. The Tuskegee Institute Lynching Inventory began in 1882 -- just before the great surge of lynchings that occurred around the turn of the century -- a surge that accompanied the American conquest of the Philippines, defeating the colored fighters of the Philippine War of Independence, called by Anglo-American historians "The Philippine Insurrection."

This inventory is offered in the spirit of healing and reconciliation, for until the wounds of the Lynching Century are healed there is little chance of reducing the ever so pervasive racism in the United States, as Ida B. Wells put it: The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Americans have a long way to go to see full realization of the promises of the Pledge of Allegiance, to see America as a land with Liberty and Justice for All instead of liberty and justice for the white Anglo-Saxon economic elite.

THE CENTURY OF LYNCHING

1865 - 1965

DATES OF DEATH

PLACES OF DEATH BY STATES

NOTE:

To go to a specific place in any of these documents, use the
Find On This Page function of your web browser.