Geographical Distribution of Lynchings 1930-1939
- Title:
- Geographical Distribution of Lynchings 1930-1939
- Alternate Title:
- Geographical Distribution of Lynchings 1930-1939
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching
- Date:
- 1940
- Date 2:
- 2024-04-25
- ID Number:
- 2349.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2349_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1940 - 1959
- Subject:
- Bias
Slavery/Race - Measurement:
- 43 x 22 sheet (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This rare and striking map of lynchings in the United States over a 10-year period makes two important points. First, the shear amount of black space, the states with lynchings, as well as the detailed sets of numbers, convey the extent of this horror. On the other hand, the fact that fewer states and fewer events were recorded in the latest years, 1936-1939, offers some hope of progress.
The most persistent and forceful effort against American lynching was driven by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909. In April 1919, the NAACP published a lengthy pamphlet entitled “Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States 1889-1918.” The pamphlet is dense with information: the detailed stories of 100 specific lynchings; various tables and charts regarding 3,224 separate lynchings over the 30-year period by date, state, region, race and gender; and finally a 63-page “Chronological List of Persons Lynched in United States, 1889 to 1918,” showing the name of each victim, date, state and place of the lynching, and the alleged crime.
The frontispiece of the NAACP’s pamphlet includes two “relatively simple choropleth maps, with simplistic hand-drawn shading on the map, ranging from an ‘x’ pattern for 1-24 lynchings to solid black for over 100 lynchings,” resulting in “the South being solid black.” Dando 2018, 208.
While the NAACP was focused on appealing to a broad, national audience in the hope of securing governmental action, this map was the product of “a slightly later movement from a very different front,” the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. This campaign was organized in 1930 by Jessie Daniel Ames, a former suffragist, and grew to include some 109 religious and civic women’s groups. Their objective was to educate and influence the public and public officials in their individual communities in the hope of preventing lynchings that might otherwise occur. Some 44,000 people signed the Association’s “anti-lynching pledges,” representing “the viewpoint of the educated, middle-class women of the South.” (Women of color were consciously excluded.) Among other things, they “sought to empower Southern women to take action against lynchings, particularly by enlisting sheriffs to prevent lynchings.” Ibid. 210-212.
From time time, the Association published educational brochures with titles like “This Business of Lynching,” “Death by Parties Unknown” and “Feeling Is Tense.” Ibid. 212. This broadside and earlier similar ones were likely folded into these publications.
Interestingly, the Association’s broadsides before 1938 used crosses to indicate the place of lynchings and dots to show locations of prevented lynchings. However, “[t]he total number of lynchings and prevented lynchings were declining, and the power of the crosses and dots were not as substantial as they had been even five years before. To create a visual with a stronger impact, they shifted to using just black and white: . . . black for states with lynchings.” Ibid. 212.
Christina Dando has shown the connections between these lynching maps and the suffrage maps of some 20 years earlier. Not only was Jessie Ames herself a force from the suffrage movement, but the Association’s mapmakers “were definitely borrowing a page from the suffrage campaign in attempting to provide ocular proof of the unequal rights and the need ‘to make the map white.’” Ibid. 213.
For related maps in the collection, Search > lynching.
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.