lynch mobs
Lawless execution crowds
A lynch mob is a group that seizes someone—historically, a Black person in the American South—to execute them without trial, typically by hanging.
The term now extends to any crowd seeking to punish someone outside legal process: Social media can become a lynch mob.
The figurative use risks minimizing the term's violent racial history.
- hangingsSuspended wall coverings
- vigilanteExtralegal justice-seeker
- extrajudicialOutside court authority
- racial violenceHarm motivated by ethnicity
- race riotViolent intergroup ethnic conflict
Emmett Till · sundown towns · Deep South · Jim Crow laws · scapegoating · deindividuation · prejudice · crowd · postcards · discrimination · racial · Ida B. Wells · Ku Klux Klan · bias · kangaroo court · mass hysteria · South · white supremacy
- Westernscowboys, western, outlaws, sheriffs, western novels
- criminal justicearrest, jail, court, prison, crime
- lawlessnessanarchy, chaos, disorder, lawbreaking, crime
- Police Historyconstables, Metropolitan Police, night watch, Scotland Yard, sheriffs
- ethnic conflictethnic cleansing, ethnic conflict, ethnic tension, ethnic tensions, ethnic violence
lynch mobsjury
Legal decision-making body
court of law · trial by jury · due process · fair trial · judicial system
lynch mobsrestorative justice
Conflict resolution through mutual healing
mercy · clemency · pardon · forgiveness · rehabilitation programs