Source article Tier A
Lynching in America / Reconstruction in America (EJI)
Equal Justice Initiative. 'Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror' (3rd ed.) and 'Reconstruction in America' (2020). Verbatim: 'EJI researchers documented 4,075 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950.' And: 'Our newest report, Reconstruction in America, documents nearly 2,000 additional lynchings between 1865 and 1876, raising the total number of documented lynchings to nearly 6,500.'
Custody docket
- Record
- eji-lynching-in-america
- Type
- article
- Trust tier
- A
- Status
- published
Sources are graded A (primary) / B (secondary academic) / C (secondary journalism) / D (tertiary or contested). See the manifesto’s Evidence Standard for full criteria.
The documentation behind the essay’s episodes-versus-victims paragraph: 4,075 racial terror lynchings in twelve Southern states, 1877 to 1950; 4,500 for 1877 to 1950 per EJI’s Reconstruction report (its Lynching in America page says “more than 4,400”); nearly 2,000 more between 1865 and 1876; nearly 6,500 documented in all. EJI’s own total adds the Reconstruction count to the 4,500, not to the 4,075. Corrected 2026-10-01: this record called the work “victim-by-victim” and set the 6,500 beside the 4,075. Both figures verbatim from EJI’s own pages, fetched 2026-08-06 (companion page: https://eji.org/reports/reconstruction-in-america-overview/).
Scope of this record, stated plainly. The essay uses EJI’s counts to say one thing: an event database’s 438 lynching episodes undercounts lynching deaths, and the measuring stick has defaults too. The essay’s docket also carries the “more than 4,400” figure from EJI’s Lynching in America page. The two counts (event episodes; documented lynchings) are different instruments and the essay does not present either as correcting the other.
Provenance
- Creator
- Equal Justice Initiative
- Published
- 2020
- Accessed
- 2026-08-06
- External record
- https://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america/
Cited by
Theme custody
No theme record references this source.