Missouri is number two – but not in a category that inspires pride in the state.
Missouri has the second-largest number of racial terror lynchings among states outside of the South, according to new data released on Tuesday, June 27 by the Equal Justice Initiative, a private, nonprofit organization based in Montgomery, Alabama that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.
Looking at data for white mobs who murdered black people with no risk of accountability or punishment between 1880 and 1940, Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) researchers unearthed 60 reported lynchings in Missouri. Of all states outside of the Deep South, EJI reported more lynchings only in Oklahoma (76). After Missouri in the second spot, the notorious list continues with Illinois (56 lynchings), West Virginia (35), Maryland (28), Kansas (19), Indiana (18) and Ohio (15).
Researchers noted that many more lynchings likely occurred in these states and in the Deep South that cannot be documented.
Researchers distinguished racial terror lynchings from hangings and mob violence that followed some criminal trial process or that were committed against non-minorities without the threat of terror. “Those lynchings were a crude form of punishment that did not have the features of terror lynchings directed at racial minorities who were being threatened and menaced in multiple ways,” EJI wrote in its landmark 2015 report “Lynching in America Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” to which the new data about states outside the Deep South was added.
The original 2015 report documented over 4,000 racial terror lynchings in 12 Southern states between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950.
“Lynching victims were often murdered in front of crowds of hundreds of people who cheered on unmasked perpetrators of brutal, torturous violence,” EJI reported. “Law enforcement officials and people associated with the justice system rarely intervened and often assisted in the terrorism that characterized this violence.”
EJI hopes to advance a national conversation about the legacy of racial terror in America. Next
“The legacy of lynching in America is devastating, made worse by our continued silence about this history,” said Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of EJI. “Our collective failure to acknowledge this history has created a contemporary political culture that doesn’t adequately value the victimization of people of color today.”
Next spring, EJI will open the Memorial to Peace and Justice, a national monument commemorating the lives of over 4,000 African-American lynching victims, and a new museum, From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which will explore America’s legacy of slavery, racial terror, segregation, and mass incarceration. Both sites are being developed in Montgomery, Alabama, the state capital where EJI is headquartered and where the Montgomery Bus Boycott was sparked in 1955, helping to incite the Civil Rights Movement.
In collaboration with Google EJI recently launched an interactive website for “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” which features the full lynching report in both digital and downloadable formats, an interactive map of lynching locations throughout the country, audio stories and videos, and a high school lesson plan. View it at https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org.
