Murder → Lynching in the United States

Lynching in the United States refers, primarily, to the practice in the 19th and 20th centuries of the humiliation and killing of people by mobs acting outside the law. These murders, most of them unpunished, often took the form of hanging and burning. To demonstrate a ritual of power, mobs sometimes tortured the victim. After the American Civil War, lynching was a method of terrorism used to intimidate freed blacks who were voting and assuming political power.