Glossary of Terms

Racial Terror Lynchings 

We focus specifically on lynchings of Black Americans by white Americans for the purpose, be it stated or implied, of strengthening and extending white supremacy. Racial terror lynchings occurred outside of any legal process and were not some form of “frontier justice.”  It was meant to subdue, intimidate, and control Black Americans. Racial terror lynchings are by far the most common form of lynching in American history. The term was coined by the Equal Justice Initiative in in its 2017 report, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror. The Alabama Memory Project has identified over 800 racial terror lynchings in the state of Alabama between the years of 1865 and 1966, more than half of which were previously unidentified. 

Attempted Lynching

Attempted lynchings refer to near-killings where one or more of the required elements of a lynching were present but the intended victim escaped or was rescued. For example, Elmore Clark was one of three black men accused of murdering a white woman in Tuscaloosa in 1933. While they were being transported to Birmingham for trial, a mob of white men reportedly overpowered law enforcement officers and shot the prisoners. Clark survived and fled.   

To learn more about lynching history nationwide, click here to view this article by our founder and director, Dr. John Giggie, and Emma Jackson Pepperman, MA in history from the University of Alabama, published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia for American History.

Explore our most commonly used primary sources and metadata terms below: