summary reprisal against Negroes and progressive whites in the USA, imposed without trial or investigation.
As a rule, lynching is accompanied by torture, humiliation, and mockery of the victim; it usually leads to death. According to most accounts, the term came into use in the 18th century and derives from a racist American colonel named Lynch. During the War of Independence, Lynch commanded a battalion of riflemen in Virginia, where the existing courts of law virtually did not function. On his own authority, he set up a court where cruel methods were used against criminals, and especially against political opponents. A special law declaring Lynch’s actions illegal was passed in October 1782, but the procedure itself was not condemned.
In time the very practice of summary reprisals came to be called lynching. The unwritten code of lynching, called lynch law, became a tool for class reprisals by reactionaries against the most active figures in the trade-union, Negro, anti-imperialist, and Communist movements in the USA.
Lynching was most widespread from the end of the 19th century until the 1930’s. According to the data of one American author, Frank Shay (Judge Lynch, New York, 1969), 4,730 cases of lynching were officially recorded in the USA between 1882 and 1951. Of these, 3,657 involved Negroes. Moreover, the authorities were indifferent to lynching in practice. Federal law and the law of a number of states provide no criminal penalties for lynching.
Since the middle of the 20th century, lynching has acquired an openly class character and more frequently takes the form of direct murder of Negroes and progressive figures. Lynching is particularly provoked by such extreme rightist, profascist organizations as the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society.