American Experience

Did lynching replace slavery as a means for whites to control blacks?

John David Smith:
Lynching existed along the frontier in all societies and whites employed the device to control "outsiders" throughout the course of southern history. After emancipation, however, lynching and other forms of racial violence provided whites the means to control, to regulate, and to keep African Americans in check. With the legal bonds of slavery removed, whites found in racial violence both a practical means to control blacks but also the means of keeping blacks fearful and perpetually marginalized in southern society. The threat of white violence, in addition to economic and social controls, maintained the controls of slavery in the post-emancipation age.