Incidence of Lynching in Mississippi 1865-1890 as a Function of the Severity of Civil War Damages

Richard B. Stevens

History 605

May 1, 2003

The term Lynch law has been traced to the American Revolution and a Virginia Quaker named Charles Lynch. During the years of revolt, cattle thieves and other bandits took advantage of the confused state of affairs. Faced with a criminal court more than 200 miles away, Lynch and others formed their own court, with Lynch as chief judge. "The accused was faced with his accusers, permitted to give testimony, and allowed to summon witnesses, and in every possible way his rights were safeguarded." This description of frontier justice, and justice it seems to be, is a far cry from the torture and barbarity that accompanied what later came to be called lynching. As the incidence and cruelty of lynching increased during and after Reconstruction, interest in the prevention and causes of lynching grew.

The South suffered drastic economic and political changes during the mid-Nineteenth Century. The southern economy shifted from pre- Civil War emphasis on a slave labor based cotton economy to an arguably free labor based cotton economy. This shift added to the physical damages inherent in any war zone, made a shambles of what had been a booming agricultural economy. In Mississippi over a space of less than thirty years political power shifted from the control of a relatively few wealthy men to the federal authorities and back again. This political power shift was accompanied by changes in the legal structure of the state government through both legal and extralegal means. Extralegal means, especially terrorism and lynching have become so strongly associated with the South that this stigma exists even today. Could it be that there was a link between the economic disaster of war and reconstruction and the incidence of lynching in the years between 1865 and 1890? Did the amount of damage inflicted by the war cause an increase in the number of post war lynchings? A preliminary county by county analysis of lynching incidence and property values in Mississippi seems to indicate that there is such a link if not causation.

The Civil War fought in the United States from 1861to 1865 has the distinction of being one of three wars fought inside the boundaries of the United States. It is the only war in which for a period of time afterward an occupying army imposed a system of military rule on a part of the country. After the war a period of Radical Reconstruction occurred during which local rule in the South was replaced by government imposed at the national level.

Lynching, like most actions, was not distributed equally across the South nor was the practice distributed equally across Mississippi. Some counties had no lynchings in the thirty-five years immediately after the war while in others lynching seemed to be a fairly common occurrence. In Hinds County, for example, there were seventeen recorded lynchings between 1865 and 1890 when the Redeemers in Mississippi adopted a new state constitution.

John Dollard argued in 1937 that lynching was a means of maintaining white supremacy in the South. Later work began to include hints of the relationship between race and sex on lynching. W. J. Cash presented and defended the image of the black beast rapist and how this idea, coupled with the ideal of the purity of southern womanhood, did indeed contribute to the underlying causes of lynching in the South. Joel Williamson suggested there was a symbolic aspect to lynching; that "black men were lynched for having achieved, seemingly, a sexual liberation that white men wanted but could not achieve without great feelings of guilt...the black man lynched was the worst part of [white men]."

In the popular culture, rape of a white woman by a black man was widely reported as a cause for lynching, however, this idea was being questioned as early as the 1920’s. Walter White wrote in 1929 that since 1881, 92 women had been lynched in America. While it is possible that all these women were accused of rape, it seems highly unlikely. According to Jan Hillegas of New Mississippi, Inc. in cases where the charge against the lynching victim is known from 1865 to 1890 there were 102 lynchings in which the victim was charged with murder. In the same period according to the same study, 74 lynched people were accused of rape or attempted rape. Although from a later period, from 1889 to 1932, 1406 lynching victims were accused of homicide, while only 878 were accused of rape or attempted rape. According to these studies, rape or attempted rape does not seem to stand up as a causative factor for lynching, and that the threat of rape in fact did not exist as a reasonable fear.

Lynching has been a subject of inquiry since before 1900 and since that time has been subjected to numerical and statistical analysis. Analysis for economic linkage, if not causation, was done as early as the 1930’s. Raper cited a study done by T. J. Woofter, Jr. for the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching which seemed to link the total number of lynchings in the United States to the value of cotton per acre. Woofter found that during the years 1900 to 1930 the incidence of lynching seemed to decrease as the dollar value of cotton per acre rose. In other words, when cotton land was more valuable, fewer people were lynched. However, Woofter does not report considering other variables, nor does his study take into account the local variations in lynching rates that Brundage described.

Figure 1 Comparison of lynching incidence to dollar value per acre of cotton, 1900-1931. (Woofter, in Raper, The Tragedy of Lynching, P. 31.

In 1967 Hubert Blalock expressed what has become known as the power threat hypothesis of lynching. He proposed that lynching was an expression of political concerns, not sexual or morality based ideologies. Blalock stated that Lynching was used by whites as a means of controlling the black population through terror and intimidation. He predicted that lynching rates would be higher in counties with a larger percentage black population.

John Shelton Reed tested this hypothesis using a grouping of Mississippi counties as his test field. Reed argues that Blalock’s hypothesis does hold up for Mississippi under statistical analysis. However, Reed also found that the trends he found for Mississippi (that lynching incidence increases as the percentage of black population increases) did not hold for similar studies in Arkansas and South Carolina. Apparently, Reed either did not take the proper variables into account or other influences were not examined completely.

Later analysis by Corzine, Creech and Corzine supported Blalock’s and Reed’s findings. Corzine extended the study of lynching outside the Deep South in an attempt to explore Reed’s statements that Blalock’s findings were not applicable in all cases. Corzine included variables for rural and urban population percentages and illiteracy rates.

In a contrary vein, analysis by Stewart Tolnay and others contradicts the findings of Blalock, Reed, and Corzine. In an effort to further correct for perceived problems with sampling and an inappropriate measure of lynching Tolnay re-examined the data and analysis of the previous authors and concluded that the assertions of Blalock, Reed, and Corzine were unsupported by the evidence. In one of the most interesting exchanges of academic opinions in recent publication, all three previous authors were allowed to respond to Tolnay’s assertions. All three remain overwhelmingly unconvinced of Tolnay’s accuracy.

Anecdotal evidence in support of the Power Threat hypothesis does exist. One extralegal means of gaining and maintaining power was the use of terror by organized groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Although the Ku Klux Klan was not responsible for every lynching in Mississippi during reconstruction the rise in the incidence of lynching after the Civil War, and especially the shift toward mostly black victims coincides with the establishment and rise of the Klan during Reconstruction. Established in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1865 the Klan rose to such strength that Congress felt compelled to pass the Force Act (1870) and the Ku Klux Act (1871) to combat the Klan. Speaking of the relationship of the Freedmen to the Ku Klux Klan, one West Alabama planter recalled that "Had it not been for their deadly fear of the Ku Klux, I do not think we could have managed them as well as we did."

Fitzhugh Brundage cautioned against psychological motivations and interpretations of lynching until at least such time as more is known about family and personal life in the South during the Post Bellum era. He also pointed out that psychological explanations failed to account for temporal and regional differences in both the incidence and the barbarity of lynching. "Distinctive conditions, not some rigid notion of white supremacy, explain why mobs executed more blacks in central Georgia than in the low country of South Carolina. "

Lynching has been recorded in Mississippi as early as 1800. Although initially lynching seems to be an equal opportunity mode of extralegal execution during and immediately after Radical Reconstruction it became an overwhelmingly black dominated institution. Of 72 instances of Mississippi lynching recorded by Jan Hillegas between 1800 and 1864, 38 victims were white, 33 were black, and the race of one victim is not known. In the years from 1865 to 1890, black lynching victims far outnumbered their white counterparts. Of the 268 people Hillegas reported were lynched in Mississippi during the 35 years immediately after the Civil War, 221 were black, 35 were white, and the race of 12 is not known. Any summary of lynchings that claims to be complete, a claim Hillegas does not make, should be suspect. Hillegas study was chosen because it focused only on Mississippi, was readily accessible, and presented a different data pool from that used by Blalock and Reed.

First, an attempt to replicate the findings of Blalock and Reed was attempted. Reed using a calculated figure derived from the percentage of black population in a given county from the 1910 and using lynching figures from 1890 to 1930 census to calculate a lynching rate per 1000 black population. Both Reed and Blalock reported a positive correlation for these numbers. A similar result was found for the years 1865 to 1890 using population figures from the 1870 census and the lynching figures reported by Hillegas.

A similar calculation using the cube of the percent colored population as in Corzine, et al demonstrates a similar but more clearly seen correlation.

Initially, a comparison of lynching rates to claims presented to the Commission on Southern Claims seemed to indicate decrease in the rate of lynching compared to claims to the commission per county resident. However, this calculation was discarded as flawed, due to the law reserving claims only to Union loyalists. It is assumed, however dangerously, that union loyalists would be less likely to be lynchers. This could be a field for further study at another time.

On further review, it was felt that a better indicator of war damages would be change in total property values from 1860 to 1870. Data from the 1860 and 1870 Censuses were used to determine the total value of real and personal property by county for the two years 1860 and 1870 and then calculate the percentage change over the decade of the war. (The negative of the 1860 Value minus the 1870 value divided by the 1860 value times 100.) The comparison of this number to the number of lynchings per 1000 colored population yielded a line showing that a greater negative change in total value of real and personal property by county over the course of the war correlated to an increase in the number of lynchings per 1000 colored population. This equates to a correlation, albeit not causation, between economic damage inflicted during the Civil War with an increased incidence of lynching in the years between the end of the war and Redemption.

Admittedly, this is a preliminary study and raises more questions than it provides answers. Any quantitative analysis of history must be meticulous in the use of numbers, and for a variety of reasons this study is not as precise as it could be. The purpose of this study is to function as an initial investigation into the possibility of economic influences on the incidence of lynching. It is not intended to forward any idea that lynching is not an expression of racist thuggery, no matter how it may be linked to economic conditions.

Like the course of the river for which it is named Mississippi’s map has changed over the course of its history. County boundaries have changed frequently over the past century and a half. For example, DeSoto County was divided in 1873 to form DeSoto and what is now Tate County. Tate County also acquired land from Marshall County, thus an area that was once two counties is now three. Similar reboundarization occurred in Sunflower, Leflore, Bolivar and other counties. Drawing conclusions about occurrences described as happening in one Mississippi county or another during the 1800’s should immediately raise questions about the temporal framework of the study, and what boundaries were used. Are the boundaries of the county listed as the site of any particular lynching the boundaries of today, or are they the boundaries at the time of the lynching? Further work to clarify this question would be desirable.

At this stage, it is most likely impossible to derive an exact figure for the number of extralegal executions in Mississippi during the 1800’s. Any number quoted as a total for lynchings is an approximation at best. Problems with lynching statistics have been recognized for as long as lynching has been studied. The University Commission on Race Questions cited conflicting accounts for 1914. For that year, three different agencies, all of which have been cited as definitive at one time or another, quoted totals of 52, 54, and 72 lynchings. In any discussion of numbers of lynchings, the case of Rainey Poole must be remembered. After Poole’s disappearance in 1971, the Sunflower River was dragged and two other bodies were found in addition to Poole’s. Their families believed they had moved to Chicago. There is no doubt that over the years other people have "moved to Chicago" with no forwarding address.

Other areas for study regarding economic indicators and lynching abound. For example, an extension of Woofter’s study of cotton land values, with allowances for inflation, into the Nineteenth Century might be useful. In view of the problems with the accuracy of the 1870 Census, a study of persistence of land ownership, similar to that of Wiener in Alabama, might yield more, if not better data relating to economic changes during and immediately after Reconstruction.