An organization that founded the nation’s first memorial to lynching victims announced Tuesday that it has documented thousands of additional killings of black people during the era of Reconstruction.
The Equal Justice Initiative said it has now documented nearly 6,500 lynchings of black people between 1865 and 1950. The group, which previously documented 4,500 lynchings, on Tuesday released a new report titled “Reconstruction in America” that documents nearly an additional 2,000 lynchings between 1865 and 1876.
“We cannot understand our present moment without recognizing the lasting damage caused by allowing white supremacy and racial hierarchy to prevail during Reconstruction,” Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson said in a statement released with the report.
The lynchings, concentrated but not limited to the South, in the years after the Civil War came as enslaved people were newly freed, but mobs attacked their attempts to live freely and participate in the political process.
The reported documented 34 mass lynchings. In Opelousas, Louisiana in 1868 an estimated 200 black people were killed over several days after attempting to participate in the political process.