The Crisis Reports on “The Lynching Industry”
One hundred years ago today ... Readers of the February issue of The Crisis were offered a detailed report on known lynchings in the U.S. in 1919, with reference to data going back to 1885. The account, unattributed, titled "The Lynching Industry" with ironic bitterness, listed 77 lynchings of “Negroes … of whom one was a colored woman and 11 were soldiers,” four of “white persons,” and three of “Mexicans.”
The Crisis, February 1920. p. 184. The Modernist Journals Project
The Crisis mapped out the lynchings and tallied them by state, noting “Georgia still leads”; Georgians had committed the most lynchings two years in a row, 1918-1919. The report, readable at The Modernist Journals Project, also listed the lynchings by alleged crime.
On February 2nd, the New York Tribune printed a letter from reader Julius A. Thomas of 140th Street which suggested that the Republican Party propose to make lynching illegal.
The New York Tribune, Feb. 2, 1920, p. 9.