Lynching is not a relic of the past. It is not confined to grainy photographs or the yellowed pages of history books. It is alive in the memory of our communities, and tragically, it still surfaces in our present day.
Just recently, the killing of Trey Reed in Mississippi reminds us that racial terror is not an ancient story it is a continuing one.
Origins of Lynching in America
Lynching extrajudicial killing carried out by mobs without trial emerged in the U.S. South during the 1830s. While the practice could target anyone accused of a crime, it quickly became a weapon of racial control.
🔹 1835: The first recorded lynching occurred in St. Louis, Missouri. Post-
🔹 Civil War: Following emancipation, African Americans became the primary targets. White supremacy used lynching as a tool to instill terror, suppress progress, and reinforce social hierarchies.
The Peak of Terror
Between the 1890s and 1920s, lynching was at its height. Thousands of African Americans were murdered by mobs, often in public spectacles attended by crowds who treated these killings as community events.
The Tuskegee Institute documented 4,733 lynching victims by 1959, primarily Black individuals, though other sources place the number at over 4,000 between 1883 and 1941.
Beyond Black America: Lynchings of Mexican Americans.
The brutality did not stop at the African American community.
🔹 In the 1910s, at least 100 Mexican Americans were lynched in Texas alone.
🔹 Research shows more than 871 lynchings of Mexican Americans occurred across 13 Western and Southwestern states after the Civil War.
🔹 One of the most striking cases was Josefa Segovia (also known as Juanita/Loaiza), a Mexican woman lynched in Downieville, California, on July 5, 1841. She was the first and only woman hanged in California, accused of murder without a fair trial.
Historians argue these numbers are undercounted. Many killings were concealed or went unreported especially in South Texas, where suspected supporters of rebels were “disappeared” by local authorities and mobs.
Decline, But Not Disappearance.
By the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement and the rising anti-lynching movement slowed the practice.
Yet the violence never truly ended. In 1981, the last officially recorded lynching took place, but unreported cases and racially motivated killings that fit the definition have persisted well into modern times.
Today’s Reality: A Modern Lynching by Another Name.
When we look at recent cases, like Trey Reed’s death in Mississippi, the echoes of America’s past are deafening. Black men are still found hanging under “suspicious circumstances.” Brown communities are still surveilled, criminalized, and scapegoated.
The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, signed into law in 2022, finally made lynching a federal hate crime. Yet a law on paper does not erase the danger in practice.
Why Violence Resurges After Major Events.
History shows a disturbing pattern:
🚩 When major events affect white communities, retaliation often falls on Black and Brown communities.
🚩 The assassination of political figures, mass shootings, or even cultural upheavals somehow get twisted into reasons to target marginalized groups.
🚩 For example, after Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the following bomb threats, we saw echoes of earlier patterns. Just as HBCUs faced a wave of anonymous threats in 2025, attacks or intimidation often intensify during moments of racial or political tension.
This is not coincidence it is strategy. These acts aim to incite fear, spark racial conflict, and shift blame away from the root causes of violence in white communities. The media often amplifies this misdirection, subtly framing Black and Brown people as the “problem,” even when they have nothing to do with the events in question.
The Unfinished Fight
Lynching may look different today, but its function has not changed:
🚩 To police Black and Brown bodies.
🚩 To remind marginalized people that their lives are not considered safe or valuable by the systems in place.
🚩 To maintain a hierarchy where violence against certain communities is normalized or excused.
America has not fully confronted this truth. Until it does, we will continue to see the legacy of lynching reemerge in new disguises whether as mob killings, “suicides” under suspicious circumstances, targeted threats, or racially motivated attacks.
👉🏽 Final Word: Lynching is not over it has evolved. From Trey Reed in 2025 back to Emmett Till in 1955, from Josefa Segovia in 1841 back to the thousands of unnamed victims whose deaths went unrecorded, the story of lynching is the story of America’s refusal to face its own demons.
Until we shine light on this darkness, the cycle of terror will continue.
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