Lynching is the execution of a person or persons, by the people of an area without the use of a court trial. Often the people lynched have been hanged.^[1] Other forms of lynching include being dragged to death behind a car, burning and use of a gun. What makes the execution a lynching is the nature of it being done without a court trial by people who believe the accused is guilty of a crime. Lynchings have been used in the southern states of the United States of America against African Americans during the time of slavery but more commonly after the abolition of slavery during the time of civil rights activism and the times of the various Ku Klux Klans. Lynching continues to be a problem to this day, and is not just limited to southern states.^[2] Lynching is murder, and many times the people who do it are never punished. One horrific example of Lynching is Lynching of Jesse Washington.

United States lynchings rose in number after the American Civil War in the early-to-mid 1860s.

Most lynchings went down by the 1950s.

Most lynchings were of African American men in the South. But women were also lynched. Also, white lynchings of blacks happened in the Midwest and Border States. Sometimes whites were also lynched. There were also lynchings of Native Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans in the West, including California.^[3]

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  Lynching of James Clark July 11, 1926 Florida^[4]
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  John William Clark lynched Cartersville GA Sept 1930 after killing Police Chief J. B. Jenkins^[5]

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