Thelynching of women in the United States refers to theextrajudicial killing of women and girls between the 1830s and the 1960s. While the majority of lynching victims were African-American men and boys, the majority of female lynching victims were African-American women and girls. The lynching of Black women has sometimes been understudied by academics and overlooked by the general public. The role of white women as perpetrators of lynching is also understudied.[1] Between 1865 and 1965, of around 5,000 Black lynching victims, between 120 and 200 Black women and girls were lynched, or around 3% to 4% of all victims.[2] A small number of women lynching victims were white, some of whom were lynched for associating with African Americans. Other women lynching victims were Indigenous, Latina, or Asian. While women lynching victims were often "successfully demonized", the lynching of white women was more likely to cause "shock, horror, and condemnation" from the general public.[3]
Artist's impression of the hanging ofJosefa Segovia, from William Downie'sHunting for Gold, published 1893.News article about the lynching ofEllen Watson, August 1889.
Due to the invisibility of Black women lynching victims, inaccuracies in historical scholarship, and cases of unconfirmed lynchings, compiling statistics regarding Black women lynchings presents challenges for researchers and historians. There also remains scholarly debate as to what constitutes lynching. In addition to extrajudicial killings of Black women and girls, many were also victims of legal executions and riots that targeted Black Americans regardless of sex.[4]
Women were not lynched in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, or Wisconsin, as those states have no recorded lynchings.[5]
Two women have been reportedly lynched in Virginia history. The 1878 lynching ofCharlotte Harris near Harrisonburg is the only documented instance of a Black woman being lynched.[6] The only possible instance of a white woman being lynched was the 1897 reported lynching ofPeb Falls, also inRockingham County, Virginia.[7]
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