Historical Lynchings and the Contemporary Voting Behavior of Blacks

Abstract

This paper analyzes the extent to which the political participation of Blacks can be traced to historical lynchings that took place from 1882 to 1930. Using county-level voter registration data, I show that Blacks who reside in southern counties that experienced a relatively higher number of historical lynchings have lower voter registration rates today. This relationship holds after accounting for a variety of historical and contemporary characteristics of counties. There exists evidence of the persistence of cultural voting norms among Blacks, yet this relationship does not exist for Whites. (JEL D72, J15, N31, N32, N41, N42, Z13)

Whitelashing: Black Politicians, Taxes, and Violence

“…This is consistent with the political ideology which led to succession, which Dew (2002) argues was less related to political concerns as opposed to hostility to Black people. Similarly, Jones, Troesken, and Walsh (2012) and Williams (2022) show that informal forms of voter suppression and racial violence were effective deterrents to Black political participation after Reconstruction’s end. If voter suppression was more likely to be effective via violence against Black political leaders, we could see a link between voters and violence, but not one that would work through nor be related to taxes.…”

“…Williams (2022), Jones, Troesken, and Walsh (2017), and Epperly et al (2020) have found lynching is related to depressed Black voter turnout, while Cook, Logan, and Parman (2018) do not find a relationship between the number of Black politicians and lynchings. If lynching is a form of voter intimidation, we would not expect a relationship between lynching and attacks on politicians given the results in Table 6.…”

“…Second, the results add to the growing literature on public policy and violence in history. Williams (2022) finds lynching in the late nineteenth century (after Reconstruction's end) depressed contemporary Black voter turnout. Jones, Troesken, andWalsh (2012, 2017) find formal voting restrictions were complementary to violence in depressing African American voter turnout, while Chacón and Jensen (2017) and Suryanarayan and White (2019) concentrate on Union military occupation during Reconstruction.…”

Representation and Aggression in Digital Racial Conflict: Analyzing Public Comments during Live-Streamed News of Racial Justice Protests

“…Past violence still shapes present politics: within the South, places that enslaved relatively more Black Americans have whites who are more Republican and more anti-Black than other Southern places (Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen 2018), and places with more lynchings a century ago have more police-involved killings and less Black voter registration today (Williams 2020;Williams and Romer 2020). And despite a period of mid-twentieth-century democratization that produced Black enfranchisement and the end of de jure (but not de facto) segregation, whites implemented an increasingly punitive and violent criminal justice system to disempower Black Americans economically, socially, and politically (Weaver 2007).…”

When Coercive Economies Fail: The Political Economy of the Us South after the Boll Weevil

“…Logan (2015) argues that economic roles in the South were intertwined with racial identity, which pushes us to consider the arrival of the boll weevil as a potentially important shock to both the racial and economic system of the South. On the interaction of racial violence and politics, Jones et al (2017) show the negative effects on black voter turnout after local lynchings while Williams (2017) traces the correlation between lynching and voter turnout to today. 2 During Reconstruction, black political efficacy led to violence against black elected officials (Logan 2019).…”