White victims of the KKK?

by olcrazypete

While flipping thru some radio channels, I heard Glenn Beck state as fact that 25-30% of lynching victims were white. I don't doubt that there might have been some white lynching victims, but do we have a definitive racial breakdown of who was lynched?

Dubstripsquads

In all actuality, this is more or less accurate. Chinese, Jewish, Hispanic, Whites and even Syrians and Sicilians were lynched in the Jim Crow period though in far smaller numbers than African-Americans. Just to start, there were ~3,500 known lynchings of African Americans from 1880s to the 1960s and ~1,000 lynchings of other groups. There is no way to know exactly how many lynchings occurred in that period, as every act of violence wasn't publicized. Reasons for these lynchings occurred for many the same reason as those perpetrated against African-Americans, perceived crime, sexual misconduct, economic struggle, or simply for reason of race. In addition to this, not all lynchings were orchestrated by Klan associated groups, most were simply an outpouring of violence by common men, perhaps associated with the Klan at some point, but likely not wearing the robes. It's important to remember that the Klan was only truly active from 1868-1871, 1915-1930's, and spattered throughout the 1950s and 60s.

Mexican Americans follow after African-Americans with 597 known lynchings between 1848 and 1928, between 1886 and 1910, 29 Sicilians were lynched (eleven of those in one day). Anti-Asian violence was endemic on the Pacific Coast with numerous riots and lynchings happening, one of the most prominent was the Chinese Massacre of 1871 in which a mob descended on the China town of Los Angeles, beating and lynching the immigrant population there. No less than twenty Chinese immigrants were killed. The most notable case of Jewish lynching was that of Atlanta businessman Leo Frank in 1915 though given the blatant anti-semitism of the Second Ku Klux Klan, and other Far Right groups in the 1920s and 1930s, I wouldn't be shocked to learn of more.

Sources

  • Gualtieri, Sarah- Strange Fruit? Syrian Immigrants, Extralegal Violence and Racial Formation in the Jim Crow South

  • Webb, Clive- The Lynching of Sicilian Immigrants in the American South, 1886-1910

  • Webb, Clive- The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928