This is a bibliography of lynching in the United States. This bibliography is limited to history and excludes other disciplines.

Lynching is a form of violence in which a mob, under the pretext of administering justice without trial, executes a presumed offender, often after inflicting torture. The term is probably derived from the name of Charles Lynch (1736–1796), who led an irregular court formed to punish loyalists during the American Revolutionary War. Records kept by the NAACP count 4,743 lynchings in the United States between 1882 and 1968; 3,446 of those killed were Black, and the remainder included white Americans and immigrants from Mexico, China, and other countries. The organization notes that there was no formal tracking and that the true number is probably higher. The Equal Justice Initiative has documented 4,075 racial terror lynchings in twelve Southern states between 1877 and 1950.

Bibliography contains academic level English language books (including translations) and journal articles, published mainly post World War II. Book entries may have references to reviews published in academic journals or major newspapers when these could be considered helpful. These reference reviews also function as a resource to find other works on this subject.

Works listed here are cited in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly sources. Each is published by an academic or major trade press, written by a recognized expert, or substantially reviewed in scholarly journals; borderline cases are omitted. A selection of primary sources are included. Many of the books below carry their own bibliographies; see Further reading section for longer ones, and External links section for historical sites and museums.

Citations follow APA style. Book have citations to academic journal or mainstream published reviews when available. For books only partly about the subject, give relevant chapter or section titles where useful and available. Translators of the original-language edition are included when possible. In cases where a title or name has appeared with more than one English spelling, use the most recent published form is used and a footnote documents any earlier title under which the work appeared.

General surveys

Apel, D., & Smith, S. M. (2008). Lynching photographs. University of California Press. Arellano, L. (2012). Vigilantes and lynch mobs: Narratives of community and nation. Temple University Press. Bancroft, H. H. (1887). Popular tribunals (Vols. 1–2). The History Company. Berg, M. (2011). Popular justice: A history of lynching in America. Ivan R. Dee. Berg, M., & Wendt, S. (Eds.). (2011). Globalizing lynching history: Vigilantism and extralegal punishment from an international perspective. Palgrave Macmillan. Broussard, A. S. (2011). New perspectives on lynching, race riots, and mob violence. Journal of American Ethnic History, 30(3), 71–75. Carrigan, W. D. (2004). The making of a lynching culture: Violence and vigilantism in central Texas, 1836–1916. University of Illinois Press. Carrigan, W. D., & Waldrep, C. (Eds.). (2013). Swift to wrath: Lynching in global historical perspective. University of Virginia Press. Cutler, J. E. (1905). Lynch-law: An investigation into the history of lynching in the United States. Longmans, Green, and Co. Eaton, C. (1942). Mob violence in the Old South. The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 29(3), 351–370. Gorup, M. (2020). The strange fruit of the tree of liberty: Lynch law and popular sovereignty in the United States. Perspectives on Politics, 18(3), 819–834. Kim, L. (2012). A law of unintended consequences: United States postal censorship of lynching photographs. Visual Resources, 28(2), 171–193. Matthews, A. (1904). The term lynch law. Modern Philology, 2(2), 173–195. Pfeifer, M. J. (2004). Rough justice: Lynching and American society, 1874–1947. University of Illinois Press. Pfeifer, M. J. (2011). The roots of rough justice: Origins of American lynching. University of Illinois Press. Pfeifer, M. J. (Ed.). (2013). Lynching beyond Dixie: American mob violence outside the South. University of Illinois Press. Pfeifer, M. J. (Ed.). (2017). Global lynching and collective violence: Volume 2: The Americas and Europe. University of Illinois Press. Rushdy, A. H. A. (2012). American lynching. Yale University Press. Segrave, K. (2010). Lynchings of women in the United States: The recorded cases, 1851–1946. McFarland & Company. Seguin, C., & Rigby, D. (2019). National crimes: A new national data set of lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941. Socius, 5. Shuler, J. (2014). The thirteenth turn: A history of the noose. PublicAffairs. Thurston, R. W. (2011). Lynching: American mob murder in global perspective. Ashgate. Tolnay, S. (2012). Quantitative narrative analysis—What it can and cannot tell us about lynching. Sociological Methodology, 42(1), 91–93. Waldrep, C. (2002). The many faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal violence and punishment in America. Palgrave Macmillan. Waldrep, C. (Ed.). (2006). Lynching in America: A history in documents. New York University Press. Yost, G. (1933). History of lynchings in Kansas. Kansas Historical Quarterly, 2(2), 182–219.

African Americans

Allen, J., Als, H., Lewis, J., & Litwack, L. F. (2000). Without sanctuary: Lynching photography in America. Twin Palms. Apel, D. (2004). Imagery of lynching: Black men, white women, and the mob. Rutgers University Press. Bailey, A. K., & Tolnay, S. E. (2015). Lynched: The victims of Southern mob violence. University of North Carolina Press. Baker, D. V., & Garcia, G. (2019). An analytical history of Black female lynchings in the United States, 1838–1969. Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology. Beck, E. M., Massey, J. L., & Tolnay, S. E. (1989). The gallows, the mob, and the vote: Lethal sanctioning of Blacks in North Carolina and Georgia, 1882 to 1930. Law & Society Review, 23(2), 317–331. Beck, E. M., & Tolnay, S. E. (1990). The killing fields of the Deep South: The market for cotton and the lynching of Blacks, 1882–1930. American Sociological Review, 55(4), 526–539. Brundage, W. F. (1993). Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880–1930. University of Illinois Press. Brundage, W. F. (Ed.). (1997). Under sentence of death: Lynching in the South. University of North Carolina Press. Capeci, D. J., Jr. (1998). The lynching of Cleo Wright. University Press of Kentucky. Clarke, J. W. (1998). Without fear or shame: Lynching, capital punishment and the subculture of violence in the American South. British Journal of Political Science, 28(2), 269–289. Cone, J. H. (2011). The cross and the lynching tree. Orbis Books. Corzine, J., Creech, J., & Corzine, L. (1983). Black concentration and lynchings in the South: Testing Blalock's power-threat hypothesis. Social Forces, 61(3), 774–796. Curriden, M., & Phillips, L., Jr. (1999). Contempt of court: The turn-of-the-century lynching that launched 100 years of federalism. Faber and Faber. Dray, P. (2002). At the hands of persons unknown: The lynching of Black America. Random House. Epperly, B., Witko, C., Strickler, R., & White, P. (2020). Rule by violence, rule by law: Lynching, Jim Crow, and the continuing evolution of voter suppression in the U.S. Perspectives on Politics, 18(3), 756–769. Feimster, C. N. (2009). Southern horrors: Women and the politics of rape and lynching. Harvard University Press. Finnegan, T. (2013). A deed so accursed: Lynching in Mississippi and South Carolina, 1881–1940. University of Virginia Press. Francis, M. M. (2014). Civil rights and the making of the modern American state. Cambridge University Press. Garland, D. (2005). Penal excess and surplus meaning: Public torture lynchings in twentieth-century America. Law & Society Review, 39(4), 793–834. Goldsby, J. (2006). A spectacular secret: Lynching in American life and literature. University of Chicago Press. Greene, T. J. (2004). Teaching the limits of liberalism in the interwar years: The NAACP's antilynching campaign. OAH Magazine of History, 18(2), 28–30. Hagen, R., Makovi, K., & Bearman, P. (2013). The influence of political dynamics on southern lynch mob formation and lethality. Social Forces, 92(2), 757–787. Hill, K. K. (2010). Black vigilantism: The rise and decline of African American lynch mob activity in the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas, 1883–1923. The Journal of African American History, 95(1), 26–43. Hill, K. K. (2016). Beyond the rope: The impact of lynching on Black culture and memory. Cambridge University Press. Holden-Smith, B. (1996). Lynching, federalism, and the intersection of race and gender in the Progressive Era. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 8(1). Ifill, S. A. (2007). On the courthouse lawn: Confronting the legacy of lynching in the twenty-first century. Beacon Press. Kato, D. (2015). Liberalizing lynching: Building a new racialized state. Oxford University Press. Lightweis-Goff, J. (2011). Blood at the root: Lynching as American cultural nucleus. State University of New York Press. Markovitz, J. (2004). Legacies of lynching: Racial violence and memory. University of Minnesota Press. McGovern, J. R. (1982). Anatomy of a lynching: The killing of Claude Neal. Louisiana State University Press. Messner, S. F., Baller, R. D., & Zevenbergen, M. P. (2005). The legacy of lynching and Southern homicide. American Sociological Review, 70(4), 633–655. Nevels, C. S. (2007). Lynching to belong: Claiming whiteness through racial violence. Texas A&M University Press. Ore, E. J. (2019). Lynching: Violence, rhetoric, and American identity. University Press of Mississippi. Rable, G. C. (1985). The South and the politics of antilynching legislation, 1920–1940. The Journal of Southern History, 51(2), 201. Raper, A. F. (1933). The tragedy of lynching. University of North Carolina Press. Rushdy, A. H. A. (2012). The end of American lynching. Rutgers University Press. Scott, T. A. (2022). Lynching and leisure: Race and the transformation of mob violence in Texas. University of Arkansas Press. Simien, E. M. (Ed.). (2011). Gender and lynching: The politics of memory. Palgrave Macmillan. Smångs, M. (2016). Doing violence, making race: Southern lynching and white racial group formation. American Journal of Sociology, 121(5), 1329–1374. Smead, H. (1986). Blood justice: The lynching of Mack Charles Parker. Oxford University Press. Smith, T. E. (2007). The discourse of violence: Transatlantic narratives of lynching during high imperialism. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 8(2). Testa, P. A., & Williams, J. (2026). Political foundations of racial violence in the post-Reconstruction South. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 141(1), 733–794. Tolnay, S. E., & Beck, E. M. (1992). Racial violence and Black migration in the American South, 1910 to 1930. American Sociological Review, 57(1), 103–116. Tolnay, S. E., & Beck, E. M. (1995). A festival of violence: An analysis of southern lynchings, 1882–1930. University of Illinois Press. Vandiver, M. (2006). Lethal punishment: Lynchings and legal executions in the South. Rutgers University Press. Waldrep, C. (2009). African Americans confront lynching: Strategies of resistance from the Civil War to the civil rights era. Rowman & Littlefield. Wexler, L. (2003). Fire in a canebrake: The last mass lynching in America. Scribner. Williams, K. E. (2012). They left great marks on me: African American testimonies of racial violence from emancipation to World War I. New York University Press. Wood, A. L. (2009). Lynching and spectacle: Witnessing racial violence in America, 1890–1940. University of North Carolina Press. Wright, G. C. (1990). Racial violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940: Lynchings, mob rule, and "legal lynchings". Louisiana State University Press. Zangrando, R. L. (1980). The NAACP crusade against lynching, 1909–1950. Temple University Press.