Lynching

"[Ida B. Wells, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing slightly right]" Photo courtesy of Library of Congress. [3]Lynching, the unlawful killing of a person by a mob and one of the most extreme forms of community sanction, has occurred in North Carolina on numerous occasions throughout its history. The term originally referred to whipping, but by the beginning of post-Civil War Reconstruction [4] it had come to mean killing almost exclusively. Although lynchings were carried out by a variety of means, hanging, followed by shooting, was the most common method in North Carolina; unlike in parts of the Deep South, it appears that no one in the state was burned to death. A few white Republicans were killed by mobs, but the overwhelming majority of victims in North Carolina were black.