Today’s Extensive Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The Tuskegee Institute in Alabama houses the most extensive archive of lynchings in America. The archive was begun in 1882 and published a yearly tabulation until 1962 – a kind of Dow Jones ticker of the nation’s most vicious form of intolerance. In the years 1882-85, the Tuskegee records show the number of whites lynched in America to have exceeded the number of blacks. After the year 1886, when the school recorded the lynching of 74 blacks and 64 whites, the number of blacks always exceeded whites. In 1892, the archive records 162 black Americans put to death outside the bounds of the law, chiefly in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Kentucky. Through 1944, when lynchings first began to decline strongly, Tuskegee recorded 3,417 lynchings of blacks and 1,291 of whites. Not until 1952 did a year pass without a single recorded lynching.
Culled from: At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America