Practicing What They Preach? Lynching and Religion in the American South, 1890–1929

Abstract

This project employs a moral solidarity framework to explore the relationship between organized religion and lynching in the American South. We ask whether a county’s religious composition impacted its rate of lynching, net of demographic and economic controls. We find evidence for the solidarity thesis using three religious metrics. First, our findings show that counties with greater religious diversity experienced more lynching, supporting the notion that a pluralistic religious marketplace with competing religious denominations weakened the bonds of a cohesive moral community and might have enhanced white racial solidarity. Second, counties in which a larger share of the black population worshipped in churches controlled by blacks experienced higher levels of racial violence, indicating a threat to the prevailing moral community or inter-group racially based solidarity. Finally, we find a lower incidence of lynching in counties where a larger share of church members belonged to denominations with racially mixed denominations, suggesting that cross-racial solidarity served to reduce racial violence.

National Crimes: A New National Data Set of Lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941

“…County-level lynchings were also affected by the structure of the farming economy, such as the number of whites engaged in tenant farming, but that relationship appears to be complex and time varying (Tolnay et al 1996:808). Southern counties with more religious diversity, black-controlled churches, and more racially segregated churches all experienced more lynchings (Bailey and Snedker 2011). The incidence of public-torture lynchings was a function of white racial solidarity at the county level in Georgia and Louisiana (Smångs 2016).…”

Racial Segregation and Southern Lynching

“…When the white population perceived its class status was threatened, it responded with violence/disenfranchisement of African Americans (Price et al 2008;Tolnay and Beck 1995). Even when white solidarity was threatened not by the black population but by white religious diversity, communities responded through collective violence against black residents (Bailey and Snedker 2011). More recently, Smångs (2016Smångs ( , 2017 has pushed these models further, constructing a framework for understanding lynchings as a means of maintaining symbolic and social racial group boundaries.…”

Racial Segregation and Southern Lynching

“…When the white population perceived their class status was threatened they responded with violence/disenfranchisement of African Americans (Tolnay and Beck 1995;Price, Darity, and Headen 2008). Even when white solidarity was threatened not by the black population but by white religious diversity, communities responded through collective violence against black residents (Bailey and Snedker 2011). More recently, Smångs (2016;2017) has pushed these models further, constructing a framework for understanding lynchings as a means of maintaining symbolic and social racial group boundaries.…”