1. Joel Roberts
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Does characterising most "hate crime" as a "lynching" in the United States undermine
the terms significance or does it simply broaden its definition?
The commonly accepted definition of "lynching" is to put to death, especially by hanging, by
mob action and without legal authority. "Hate crime" is defined as a crime motivated by
racial, sexual, or other prejudice, typically one involving violence. Already we can identify
the contrasting differences between these two definitions. In theory, the term hate crime has
absorbed the definition of lynching, whilst including modern prejudices which have become
relevant political and social issues within today's society. This could be due to the fact that
although this is the generally accepted definition of lynching, it doesn't mean it is correct or
has its limitations, as the definition is continuously changing due to the progression of ethics
and modern interpretation. Most revisionists within this field would agree that there is
actually no fixed definition of lynching as the term is always going to be interpreted
differently by different individuals as society progresses. So if this is the case, why is the
term hate crime necessary and what stops us from broadening the definition of lynching to
redefine its limitations which would allow the term to be politically correct from a modern
perspective? A question this essay and investigation in to this topic will attempt to answer.
To suggest the expression lynching would be inappropriate to use when characterising it with
hate crime cases which fall under the same motivations is not an invalid statement to make.
The word lynching is always going to have a striking effect when used in context based on
the words legacy. Victims and their families who were unfortunate enough to be a statistic in
one of the legitimately recorded lynchings in the past may take issue with the word being so
loosely used for other crimes which don't share the same severity and demise of the lynching

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which was inflicted upon them. This is a reasonable objection to make especially when
considering that hate crimes doesn't have to involve the death of a victim (hate crime can
come in different variations: physical assault, bullying, harassment etc.). Whereas most
lynching cases and its recognised definition itself, concludes with the death of the victim.
Fundamentally, the word could lose its significance if we allow its definition to be broadened.
A comparison of this argument would be the debate caused by the use of the term 'Holocaust',
where individuals have been reluctant to use the word in regards to genocides other than the
'Jewish Holocaust', in order to preserve the significant magnitude in which this term
represents (the catastrophic events of the Second World War), "Holocaust" is a name that
provides the event with meaning, and the meaning carries deep religious, Judeo-Christian
connotations."1
Mary Turner and her unborn child were both severely murdered by a lynching mob on 19
May, 1918 and is considered as one of the most chilling lynching cases to be recorded in the
early twentieth century. It doesn't seem fitting to group this severe lynching case with what
modern interpretation defines as a hate crime (anything from racial discrimination and
physical violence to the murder of an individual or individuals), as the term and its definition
doesn't provoke the same sentimentality we get from the word lynching (lynching has its
legacy whilst hate crime is a fairly new concept). This in no way should undermine the
significance of some modern examples of hate crimes which do compare to this lynching case
(Arthur "J. R." Warren, 4 July, 2000 - an African American homosexual man who was
savagely beaten and murdered because of his sexual orientation). However, the argument
being made here is that hate crime seems to be a generalisation of violence aggravated by
individuals prejudices whereas lynching has a distinct history in relation to America's
unstable relationship with racial rights which left an unforgettable nostalgia to all those who
1 Michael Berenbaum, The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined
(Indiana University Press,2002),p.79

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were affected by it, "As a form of racial violence, lynching was fostered by an ideology of
white supremacy, which developed and flourished within the United States after the abolition
of slavery."2
Additionally, there are too many limitations and contrasting factors between these two
representations of racial violence to ever consider combining their two definitions together.
Lynching and its history has a direct link with racially motivated violence towards the
minority class of the United States. Evidence we have suggests most of these attacks were
focused on the African American community, although other minorities such as Mexicans,
Asians and Native Americans suffered from lynchings as well. Recordings of hate crimes on
the other hand show that there is much wider rationale behind these violent attacks, which
include racial reasons but also other prejudices. Evidence of hate crimes prove that they can
occur in response to a person's disability, sexuality or religion, as well as their race. These
prejudices could also have been the motive behind some lynching cases we have evidence of,
however we only associate the racial impact behind lynching attacks as the progression of
ethics in the latter part of the twentieth century has taught us to sympathise with these aspects
of certain social groups which were left neglected during the period where lynchings was
most prominent in the US (pre-civil rights movement). But what this evidence does suggest
to us is that the term lynching cannot incorporate the hatred being targeted towards these
aspects of a person's individuality as there is not enough sufficient evidence to suggest that a
person's sexuality, disability or religion was the motive behind a lynching (as these motives
were not even considered during this time period). We only know that lynchers and lynching
mobs were motivated by racial justification. Therefore, a new term such as hate crime has
had to have developed to consolidate the introduction of these newly recognised
2 Kathy A. Perkins,Judith LouiseStephens, Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by African Women (Indiana
University Press,1998),p. 4

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inappropriate social prejudices, "A hate crime is alienated individual's offense against
society."3
Furthermore, there's the community aspect of lynching which the definition of hate crime
doesn't inherit. For a crime to become a lynching, the offence has to be committed by more
than one person. This is what is understood anyway within the currently accepted lynching
definition when it states "mob action". This kind of mob action can incorporate two
functions: either there's multiple perpetrators who could be found liable for the same crime,
for example the lynching of Emmet Till in Greenwood, Missouri on 28 August, 1955; or the
demonstration of a lynching is made public and attended by a mass crowd in order to turn it
into a spectacle which could be enjoyed (even celebrated). The former of these functions can
relate to hate crimes as there are several examples of hate crime victims being attacked by
more than one aggravator; for example the murder of James Byrd Jr. by three men (white
supremacists) on the 7 June, 1998. However, the latter function brings in the community
aspect of lynching which is difficult to identify when exploring hate crime case studies. In
most instances people attended these spectacle lynchings to be entertained and affirm their
white supremacy by viewing these demonstrations; or even to satisfy a sense of justice they
believed the law failed to provide (based on their own judgements). "Grace Elizabeth Hale
saw "spectacle lynching" as a product of modernization."4 These kinds of lynchings would be
extremely rare if they occurred within present day America, in contract to them being fairly
regular occurrences in pre-civil rights movement America (especially in southern states). You
wouldn't find a modern US community supporting the actions of a hate crime like they did
for a lynching because holding on to controversial prejudice views has become a taboo
subject due to the national progression and acceptance of social equality. If these kinds of
3 Christopher Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America
(PalgraveMacmillan,2002),p.186
4 Christopher Waldrep, Lynching in America: A History of Documents, Grave Elizabeth Hale, "Spectacle
Lynching" (1998),(NYU Press,2006), p. 22

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demonstrations were to occur in today's United States, it would be met with extreme domestic
condemnation, severe punishment from the American legal system and that community who
committed the act could possibly receive worldwide vilification, harming America's global
status. Therefore, the evidence of spectacle lynchings and this aspect of community
contribution will always be an area within the definition of lynching which makes it
coherently different to what the term hate crime represents.
Even though these examples and theories make a convincing argument in relation to
preventing the broadening of the definition of lynching, they fail to explain why the word
hasn't simply been developed to incorporate the violations in which the term hate crime has
come to represent, like it has done so in the past. "To lynch" could factor in to two
completely different set of actions due to how the phrase is interpreted from a modern point
of view (which can range from its general interpretation as stated before to modern forms of
social abuse not apparent or even possible in past generations) and what the phrase meant
back within its first use of origin in the eighteenth century (organised but unauthorised
punishments of criminals). This is therefore a clear indication that the definition of lynching
has been modified to fit different social settings, to allow the word and its legacy to survive.
If this has been the case in the past, then why should the term hate crime be introduced to
assimilate the unlawful social prejudices we have today when the definition of lynching could
easily be developed to incorporate these factors just like the other factors the word has had to
have incorporated due to the progression of social standards and basic human understanding
of what is wrong. Thinker in to hate crime issues, Barbara Perry, sums up this ignorance
towards the hate crimes representation and similarity towards the history of lynching, "The

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history of lynching in America and its relevance to modern hate crime has been
underemphasized."5
The community aspect of this argument is difficult to counter-argue due to the limitation of
significant evidence which would suggest a hate crime can involve the participation of a
community or simply be a visual spectacle. However, although there are no recorded
spectacle hate crimes, there is a community element which can be affiliated with these kinds
of offence. What is being suggested here is that due to the advancements in media
broadcasting and the creation of social technological platforms (for example the internet and
social media), the methods of communication and news coverage of a reported hate crime can
reach new global lengths, leading to a national and sometimes international community focus
on the condemnation of these discriminatory acts of violence. Protesters against the acts of
lynching (NAACP anti-lynching movement) before these technological advances in the latter
part of the twentieth century were limited to basic forms of communication in order to gather
supporters for their cause (therefore a substantial condemning community could never be
established on a global scale). What technology has given us is the significant tools to
establish a community where the protest of hate crimes and social discrimination can be
shared with a worldwide audience, which in turn will lead to more support for this cause and
raise many more issues about problems within society, "The increase in these writings is
strongly influenced by advances in worldwide media technology that allows such crimes to
be exposed and the laws or penalty enhancements for committing them."6 So the community
aspect here has been interpreted in a completely different sense but still valid when it comes
to identifying similarities between lynchings and hate crimes.
5 Barbara Perry, Hate Crimes [5 volumes] (Greenwood PublishingGroup,2009),p. 29
6 Robert J. Kelly,Jess Maghan, Hate Crime: The Global Politics of Polarization (SIU Press,1998),p. 240

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If we consider these factors, then why have we been so reluctant to develop or reinterpret the
definition of lynching ever since the realisation and progression of social equality? When
using the US as an example, this hesitation of redevelopment could be due to the guilt the
citizens of the country still feel when they are reminded of their dark history with racial and
social acceptance. Due to the progression of ethics and moral understanding during the civil
right movement in the 1950s and 60s, the notion that anyone could commit or assimilate the
actions of a lyncher in a society which understands that the activities their ancestors
participated in was morally wrong would be unimaginable. But some of the recorded
lynchings of the past are so relatable to modern examples of hate crimes, it would be
indecorous to simply disregard the suggestion that lynching is still present in modern day
America, just because there's a believe that this part of our history is archaic and has been
eradicated due to modern enlightenments. Scholarly thinker within this field Ashraf Rushdy
has coined the term "end-of-lynching discourse" to explain this way of thinking that
lynchings are a thing of the past and believes this way of thinking contributes to this
deniability complex Americans have developed when the discussion turns to dark periods
within their countries history, "the end -of-lynching discourse, which arose in the 1930s and
1940s and continues to determine how we think and talk about lynchings in the first decades
of the twenty-first century."7
This deniability complex in the US is real and can certainly be used in relation to the decline
of the use of the term lynching and the ignorance shown in respect to Americas still
prominent racial issues. This is evident by the racial disparity in the legal system, where an
overwhelming disproportionate amount of African-American men have died or our currently
awaiting execution due to the capital punishment laws in the US in comparison to white
criminals, whose crimes are similar to those incarcerated African-American men and yet
7 Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, The End of American Lynching (Rutgers University Press,2012), p. 2

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escape the death penalty. "In addition, killers of white victims are treated more severely than
people who kill people of color when it comes to deciding that charges to bring."8 Scholars
have referred to this biased statistic within the US justice system as 'legal lynching' to
highlight the racial disparities within the system and how they are using the death penalty to
permit unlawful racial justice (just like the lynchers of the past had done, however outside the
jurisdictions of the law). Disputes and altercations have recently been broadcast through
various media outlets in relation to the unstable relationship between the police and the
African-American community; for example most recently with the Ferguson riots in 2014,
provoked by what the African-American community of Ferguson perceived to be the
unlawful killing of black teen, Michael Brown, by police officer, Darren Wilson, on 9
August, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. It comes to no surprise with the kind of statistics
coming out of the US legal system in relation to African-American deaths under the
instruction of the law, that these kinds of protests against the system have erupted. Amy
Wood, who is heavily critical of these incarceration numbers and the basic negligence shown
by the US criminal system towards racial injustice has stated that, "If anything still survives
from lynching, it is this odd idea that a white life is more valuable than a black one."9 This
argument may not proof that there are similarities between lynchings and hate crimes, but it
does prove that the legacy of lynching is still alive and is now working its way in to the legal
system, contradicting what its current definition states.
Based on both sides of this argument, we can only conclude that by broadening the
definition of lynching we could easily incorporate the offences hate crimes are characterised
8 Jess Daniels,'The Death Penalty, Racismand the American Prejudiceof Lynching',
http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2011/09/23/death-penalty-racism-american-practice-lynching/
(accessed:25 April,2015)
9 IllinoisStateUniversity,'Legacy of lynchingstill with us',
http://mediarelations.illinoisstate.edu/report/1213/sept18/lynching.asp (accessed:02 May, 2015)

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by, thus resulting in the decline of the use of the term hate crime. However, when would this
development and reinterpretation of the word lynching stop? If we allow factors such as
modern social prejudices and 'legal lynchings' to fall under its definition, then what would
prevent future inequalities and crimes also being absorbed in to its definition? After all, social
norms in the future could differ largely to the social norms we have today. There has to be a
limit and the word lynching has seemed to have hit its limit due to the decline in its use from
the modern language. We will always have the legacy of lynching and we will always
remember what it means (historians in this field won't let us forget). But if we continue to
broaden its definition the whole term and what the term represents will lose all its meaning,
and this period of America's dark past will be forgotten forever. Lynching is still with us but
now it is referred to as a hate crime; a term which doesn't share the same sentimentality as
lynching, but still has a prominent significance within our current modern society.

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Bibliography
Books
- Berenbaum, Michael, The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed,
and the Reexamined (Indiana University Press, 2002).
- Kelly, Robert J., Jess Maghan, Hate Crime: The Global Politics of Polarization (SIU Press,
1998).
- Perkins, Kathy A., Louise Stephens, Judith, Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by African
Women (Indiana University Press, 1998).
- Perry, Barbara, Hate Crimes [5 volumes] (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2009).
- Rushdy, Ashraf H. A., The End of American Lynching (Rutgers University Press, 2012).
- Waldrep, Christopher, Lynching in America: A History of Documents, Grave Elizabeth
Hale, "Spectacle Lynching" (1998), (NYU Press, 2006).

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- Waldrep, Christopher, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and
Punishment in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
- Wood, Amy Louise, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America,
1890-1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
Websites/Articles
- Carol Marie Cropper, 'Black Man Fatally Dragged In a Possible Racial Killing' (published:
10 June, 1998), The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/10/us/black-man-
fatally-dragged-in-a-possible-racial-killing.html (accessed: 24 April, 2015).
- Illinois State University, 'Legacy of lynching still with us',
http://mediarelations.illinoisstate.edu/report/1213/sept18/lynching.asp (accessed: 02 May,
2015).
- Jess Daniels, 'The Death Penalty, Racism and the American Prejudice of Lynching',
http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2011/09/23/death-penalty-racism-american-practice-
lynching/ (accessed: 25 April, 2015).
- Richard C. Dieter, 'The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who
Decides', http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-penalty-black-and-white-who-lives-who-
dies-who-decides (accessed: 05 May, 2015).