Excluding the New England States there are no States in the Union in which lynchings have not taken place during the last twenty-two years. In forty-five of the States and Territories, as they are at present organized, one or more persons have been lynched during this period. In the Southern Group of States more than three times as many negroes as whites have been lynched. In Texas the “Others” were Mexicans, with the exception of one Indian; in Louisiana the “Others” were all Italians. In the Western Group of States only about five per cent of the persons lynched were negroes while nearly twelve per cent were “Others,” the majority of whom were Indians, but there were also Chinamen, Mexicans, Italians, a Japanese, a Swiss, and a Bohemian. In the Eastern Group of States about thirty-four per cent of the persons lynched were negroes and the rest were whites, there being no “Others.”

Only one lynching with one person lynched is credited to the New England States. In July, 1886, in Litchfield County, Connecticut, Charles Lockwood, a farm-hand, was found early one morning hanging from the limb of a tree, evidently having been dead for several hours. According to the New York Times,^[219] public opinion was divided as to whether he had been lynched or had committed suicide. The coroner’s verdict said that it was a case of suicide. To a disinterested party, however, the evidence appears very strong in favor of the former view. Lockwood had brutally murdered “pretty Mattie Randell,” of Morris, Connecticut, and escaped. Searching parties were organized and were scouring the country, and feeling ran high in the community against him. Threats were repeatedly made against his life. His body was found one morning dangling from the limb of a tree. In the writer’s opinion, formed from reading various newspaper accounts of the occurrence, the Chicago Tribune rightly included Charles Lockwood in the list of persons lynched in the year 1886.

For the purpose of studying the distribution of lynchings with a view to determining what particular characteristics of the population, if any, promote and foster the practice of lynching, it is the number of lynchings that have occurred in specified districts which should be considered rather than the number of persons who have been lynched in those districts. Not infrequently several persons have been lynched at one time and such cases would tend to vitiate any conclusions drawn from an investigation made on the basis of the number of persons lynched. The circumstances which surround lynchings do not vary in any respect according to the number of victims at particular lynchings. The following tables have therefore been prepared to show the distribution of lynchings by States on the basis of the number of lynchings. In making up these figures it was found necessary to establish some standard length of time for a lynching. There were a number of cases where persons were lynched on succeeding or subsequent days at or near the same place, and the question arose as to whether there was one lynching or more than one lynching in such cases. It would seem that ordinarily, if one whole day intervened between the lynching of one person and the lynching of another person, sufficient time had elapsed for the excitement over the lynching of the first person to abate somewhat and that the lynching of the second person in such a case could not rightfully be considered a part of the preceding act of mob violence. Using this as a criterion, all cases in which persons were lynched on two succeeding days at or near the same place have been classified as one lynching, but all cases in which at least a day intervened in the lynching of two or more persons at or near the same place have been classified as two or more lynchings.