Lynching, a form of violence in which a mob, under the pretext of administering justice without trial, executes a presumed offender, often after inflicting torture and corporal mutilation. The term lynch law refers to a self-constituted court that imposes sentence on a person without due process of law.

The Tuskegee Institute has recorded the lynchings of 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites between 1882 and 1968, with the peak occurring in the 1890s, at a time of economic stress in the South and increasing political suppression of blacks.

Almost 5,000 American lives were claimed at the hands of lynch mobs who used lynching as a tool of terror.