New data visualization from the Racial Terror: Lynching in Virginia project of James Madison University helps to illustrate chronological patterns in the lynchings of Blacks.
This chart illustrates the number of African Americans lynched in Virginia during the years following the Civil War.
When Federal protections were withdrawn at the end of Reconstruction, extrajudicial executions of African Americans through lynchings carried out communially by groups, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, of whites became much more common. While Lost Cause exegesis in the past often explained these lynchings as a self-help method of white justice to do what the Republican-controlled courts refused to do, lynchings were most common when white supremacist governments were in power. In the chart above, the 1881-1883 period in which the biracial Readjuster Party controlled state government saw a sharp decline in lynchings. White lynchers typically carried out these killings when they were assured that the government would grant them impunity or even honor for their deeds.
Note: Feature illustration from January 4, 1890, issue of the Richmond Planet. The Planet was an African American newspaper in Richmond, Va.
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