Below you will find the published sources that were used as lynching data for this website. Extreme effort was taken to stitch together these sources carefully under the following guiding principle: more recent, geographically-specific, or updated studies are allowed to correct the details given in a source that is older, more general, or less confident.
The data for the Monroe Work Today Dataset Compilation began with Tuskegee Institute, where 4,616 records are currently stored in Box 132 at the Tuskegee University Archives. This was merged with the Tolnay & Beck inventory of lynchings [1995 database] in a manual process to integrate all its additions and corrected information for the ten Southern States. The data assembly was then repeated for 70 more scholarly sources in order to include research published recently: lynching studies in other states, narrative accounts mentioned in books, as well as academic journal articles for Sicilian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and others. Each new source was integrated by hand to prevent the duplication of records.
In 2020 the website was updated with yet-more accurate data, owing to a collaboration in 2019 with scholar Demar Lewis at Yale University. In this process, hundreds of missing lynchings in the South for the years 1877–1882 were added to the map, drawing from the Tolnay-Beck-Bailey inventory of lynchings [2015 database] managed by the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE). Three additional scholarly sources were also consulted to add lynchings to the map.
Thus the Monroe Work Today Dataset Compilation is not original research into primary documents of the 1800–1900s. Rather, it is a compilation of the most credible secondary sources that have ever been published.
(This bibliography is also available in a traditional academic format: PDF)
| Number of records in version 1.2: | 8,388 |
| Number of persons of color: | 5,847 |
| Number of persons of unknown race: | 283 |
| Number of persons visualized on map: | 5,024 |
Note: There are 4 important caveats which accompany the data.
Early definition of Lynching:
When Monroe Work first began itemizing lynchings, there was no nationally accepted definition of lynching. According to his biographer, he followed these guidelines to decide whether to count a reported death as a lynching:
• There had to be evidence that a person was killed (not just rumors); At least three people had to be involved to consider it a lynch mob;
• The person must have met their death outside the law – OR, in cases where a sheriff deputized a posse of privates citizens, he counted a lynching when the posse zealously maimed and killed the suspect rather than return him to custody as should be expected;
• If a maimed body was found with unknown circumstances, the brutality of the death would determine if he counted a lynching (that it was improbable a single murderer alone could mutilate, tie up or weight down a body in a river.)
• Mr. Work emphasized that lynching involved a mob supplanting the legal process, as he wrote himself: [See quote] The group must have acted under the pretext of serving ‘justice’ for some sort of transgression (real or not). Under this definition, Monroe Work did not classify indiscriminate racist killings as lynchings, such as the randomly hanged or dismembered victims during white supremacy riots.
1940 Tuskegee definition:
Leading activists met at Tuskegee Institute in December 1940 to agree upon a definition that could be shared among the differing perspectives of the NAACP and ASWPL:
(1) There must be legal evidence that a person was killed.
(2) That person must have met death illegally.
(3) A group of 3 or more persons must have participated in the killing.
(4) The group must have acted under the pretext of service to justice, race or tradition.
This "Tuskegee definition" became widely quoted since then. It is often still used by many (but not all) scholars today.
In my compiling of lynchings I have found it necessary to have a working definition of lynching in order that out of the great mass of information which I collect with reference to crime, in all of its aspects, a particular set of crimes designated as lynchings might be placed in a special category. This working definition which I have always had in mind is that lynching has to do with individuals supplanting the law and acting in defiance of the law. The basis on which I have compiled my information relative to lynchings is in general the same as has been used by the Chicago Tribune and other agencies which from time to time have compiled under the term, "lynching". The result is that in my list of lynchings I have endeavored to include only those cases in which individuals charged with offenses which made them amenable to the law are put to death without due process of law, whereas the law should have been permitted to take its course, the victims should have been accorded a trial, and punishment, if any, should have meted out according to the law.
This general idea that lynching is punishment without due process of law of persons charged with offences against the law is borne out by definitions of lynching which have been formulated during the past 82 years. [These] were a section of a monograph which I prepared and published in 1925 under the title "The Law vs. The Mob."
Despite the extreme pressure that was brought to bear on Tuskegee Institute to compel her to change her policy with reference to what shall be included under lynchings, I continued to exclude from the record victims of riots and strikes, whether North or South.
— Monroe Work, "An Autobiographical Sketch," 7 February 1940.
TUA 97.001, folder 1, Papers of Monroe N. Work, Archives, Tuskegee University
26 records for South Dakota are missing
Typed manuscripts, Apr–May 1931
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995
Obtained via Project HAL website, computer file dated 2001‑11‑05
Definition of lynching: adheres as closely as possible to the 1940 Tuskegee Institute definition
Obtained via CSDE Lynching Database website, computer file dated 2017‑02‑20
Definition of lynching: adheres as closely as possible to the 1940 Tuskegee Institute definition
Univ of Illinois Press, 2013
Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishers, 2009
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004
Definition of lynching: same as 1940 Tuskegee Institute definition
American Nineteenth Century History 3:1 (Spring 2002), pp 45-76
Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2002
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006
Definition of lynching: same as 1940 Tuskegee Institute definition
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990
Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc, 2009
Definition of lynching: North Carolina officials defined lynching as the murder of a person who was taken from a jail or the custody of law enforcement officials. (This would exclude cases where a victim was murdered at large by a mob.)
Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004
Definition of lynching: same as Tuskegee Institute
American Nineteenth Century History 6:3 (Sept 2005), pp 227-239
Definition of lynching: same as Tuskegee Institute
American Nineteenth Century History 6:3 (Sept 2005), pp 241-271
Definition of lynching: same as Tuskegee Institute
Glendo, WY: High Plains Press, 1993
College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007
New York: New Press, 2005
Definition of lynching: "A public murder done with the considerable support of the community." (The lynchings discussed in this book also meet the 1940 Tuskegee Institute definition)
Santa Fe: Twin Palms Publishers, 2000
Definition of lynching: not stated
Kansas Historical Quarterly 2:2 (May 1933)
North Dakota History: Journal of the Northern Plains 57:1 (Winter 1990), pp 20-29
Charles N. Clark Kiktode, 2008
Bunchgrass Historian: Whitman County Historical Quarterly 10:1 (Spring 1982), pp. 20-29
New York: Random House, 2007
Documents victims of murder and mob violence /
not necessarily defined as lynchings
New York: Oxford University Press, 2013
Definition of lynching: "the summary killing of one or more individuals by a self-appointed group without regard to established legal process." (This book avoids the term lynching in favor of ‘mob violence’ which is more certain.)
Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishers, 2015
High-Lonesome Books, 2006
Definition of lynching: (none declared, but discusses the same lynching case as recorded by Tuskegee Institute)
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2011
Definition of lynching: this book narrates the periodic changes in definition of lynching from very early colonial times. This source added no new records of lynchings, but clarifies some cases of lynchings already identified.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012
Definition of lynching: "a lynching is an act of extralegal collective violence by a group alleging pursuit of summary justice."
W.W. Norton & Company, 2016
Montgomery: Equal Justice Initiative, 2012-2015
Definition of lynching: (1) the lynching victims’ deaths were confirmed; (2) the lynching was a deliberate extrajudicial killing involving at least two perpetrators; (3) the lynching party claimed to be enforcing justice or protecting the social order; and (4) the lynching party acted with very little to no fear of any repercussions from official legal authorities
Montgomery: Equal Justice Initiative, 2016
Definition of lynching: not stated
Boston: Northeastern Univ. School of Law, 2007-2017
Documents victims of police murder and mob violence / not necessarily defined as lynchings
Lafayette: Univ. of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2014
Definition of lynching: not stated
Hawai‘i Chronicles: Island History from the Pages of Honolulu Magazine (Bob Dye, Ed.) University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996, pp 197-214
Definition of lynching: not stated
Definition of lynching: same as 1940 Tuskegee Institute definition
Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2006
Definition of lynching:
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009
Definition of lynching: not stated, but draws on records of Tuskegee Institute and Tolnay & Beck 1995, among others
Nebraska History 93 (2012), pp 138-153
Definition of lynching: an illegal killing carried out by a group under the pretext of serving justice
Westport: Greenwood Press, 2007
Documents victims of race riots /
not defined as lynchings
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011
Narrates victims of massacre /
not defined as lynchings
US Dept of Agriculture, 1992
Narrates victims of massacre /
not necessarily defined as lynchings
Idaho Dept. of Lands, Bureau of Mines and Geology, 2nd edition, 1983
Documents victims of massacre /
not defined as lynchings
Documents victims of massacre /
not defined as lynchings
Oregon State University Press, 2009
Documents victims of massacre /
not defined as lynchings
The South Carolina Historical Magazine, 95:2 (Apr 1994), pp 142-155
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
The South Carolina Historical Magazine, 86:2 (Apr 1985), pp 100-112
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Southern Cultures 8:4 (2002), pp 29-55
Documents victims of race riot / not necessarily defined as lynchings
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ Press, 1976
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
University of Georgia Press, 2009
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
New York: Atheneum, 1972
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 76:4 (Apr 1973), pp 418-439
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 75:2 (2008)
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 99:3 (July 1975)
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Nebraska History, 91:1 (2010), pp 152-165
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Univ Press of Mississippi, 1972
Documents victims of race riot / not necessarily defined as lynchings
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Oklahoma Commission, 2001, pp 109-122
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
New York: GP Putnam's Sons, 1996
Documents victims of race riot /
not necessarily defined as lynchings
Kansas City: Univ of Missouri, 2014
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
May 2014
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
East Texas Historical Journal, 14:1 (1976)
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Univ of North Carolina Press, 1999
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
New York: Da Capo Press, 1964
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Syracuse: Syracuse Univ Press, 1996
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Plume, 2008
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Univ of California Press, 2005
Documents victims of mob violence /
not necessarily defined as lynchings
New York: Hill and Wang, 2013
Documents victims of mob violence /
not defined as lynchings
1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, 2006, pp 121-152
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Applewood Books, 1863
Documents victims of race riot /
not defined as lynchings
Baton Rouge: Lousiana State Univ Press, 1985
Wisconsin Law Review 2016:3, pp 575-626
Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 21:3 (Aug 2010 supplement), pp 3-5
Cambridge University Press, 2014
Penguin Books, 2011
August 2017
