Template talk:Lynching in the United States

Scope

The challenge of this template is that it can never be inclusive enough, as there have been thousands, but the majority of which would never be counted as notable enough for WP articles. It is estimated that 4,743 lynchings happened in the US between 1882 and 19681; how can this template ever possibly reflect that? As it stands this is a shamefully inadequate tool. • Freechildtalk 21:41, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I wondered about this myself. I think that we can set the notability guidelines for victims of crime as a baseline for inclusion here. This should include quality (B-class or better) articles on lynchings that: precipitated political changes (see Emmet Till), are of national or regional importance, are well-documented case-studies, and/or particularly infamous crimes (see Mary Turner). Others (such as Eliza Woods) should probably be folded into existing articles and removed (in Woods' case, Ida Wells-Barnett). It is likely that lists and categories are the most effective tools to document the lion's share of notable victims. Those non-notable victims comprising the vast majority of those 4,743 can only be documented in Wikipedia by descriptive statistics.

That said, I think that we needn't become overly concerned, as the template has some way to go before it becomes unwieldy; further categorization of the victims (racial, cattle rustlers, labor organizers) will occur as the template evolves. On the other hand, I don't spend too much time in the Template namespace so perhaps I'm mistaken. — James Estevez (talk) 03:07, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Instead of the woefully inadequate and misleading list of incidents and victims, I am WP:BOLDly removing those two sections of the template. I believe it will be impossible to complete such lists and I believe the template will be far more useful and informative without that misleading information included. Toddst1 (talk) 20:39, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Chronological order?

Instead of using the alphabetical order, shouldn't we re-order them chronologically please? I think this would make more sense.Zigzig20s (talk) 16:42, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree. See the multiple victims section; I did that. deisenbe (talk) 17:39, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Resolved

John Trotwood Moore

Should we add John Trotwood Moore? Are there other pro-lynching individuals we could add?Zigzig20s (talk) 14:45, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

User:Deisenbe: Thoughts?Zigzig20s (talk) 13:50, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Where did you get the lynching from? In the article his article cites as its authority, the Bailey one, p. 20 there is defense of “anti-black violence”. Is that to be equated with lynching? Or did I miss something? I’d like to read exactly the words Moore wrote.

But an out and out lynching defender should be mentioned. deisenbe (talk) 00:08, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

User:Deisenbe: On page 25 (with the picture of the tree): "Moore--a trained attorney, the son of an Alabama judge, and the descendant of a United States Supreme Court justice--became one of the South's more strident advocates of lynching."Zigzig20s (talk) 00:20, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

That’s pretty clearcut. I also found him as a defender of lynching here: https://www2.tntech.edu/wrc/DuckRiverManual/History/Gilded_Age_(1877_to_1917)/Gilded_Age_Bibliography_Combined.htm#Clifford

In the Encyclopedia of Alabama it says “his racist views, which are expressed either directly or indirectly throughout his writings,”

I found a whole book of his:http://www.roanetnhistory.org/moore-songs-stories-tn.html

Search for the n* word in: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23637/23637-h/23637-h.htm. deisenbe (talk) 01:39, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

I would rather not, this man's article is already creepy enough as it is. But he was notable as the state librarian/archivist and the author of several books, so we had to include this info from the JSTOR article.Zigzig20s (talk) 18:11, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

The part about lynching may need to be fleshed out in his article however.Zigzig20s (talk) 18:36, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Changing this template to a sidebar

This template is getting long and it may get a lot longer. Sometime it will have to be collapsed. I can do that as a sidebar, and then there could be a thumbnail. How to do it elegantly as a template I don’t know how to do and at Teahouse nobody knew, though I could take my inquiry further. Anyone got a problem with this change? deisenbe (talk) 00:12, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

I prefer this template. A sidebar won't work with shorter articles. It doesn't matter if it collapses, it can be "un-collapsed."Zigzig20s (talk) 01:14, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

What do you think should be done with this bulky template? deisenbe (talk) 01:23, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

We should add a line with lynching advocates under the victims. There was Moore; who else?Zigzig20s (talk) 01:33, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Done. deisenbe (talk) 12:47, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

What do you mean by “a sidebar won’t work with shorter articles”? deisenbe (talk) 12:47, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

They are long and if there is a sidebar, we can't add pictures. I prefer templates like the one we have now.Zigzig20s (talk) 18:37, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Possible article for somewhere in the template

Harmon Murray is about a criminal who died at the hands of an associate, but three of his fellow gang members were lynched, and Murray would likely have been lynched if he had been taken alive. The article covers the three lynchings, but I am not sure how or where it fits in the template. - Donald Albury 23:59, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Joseph Smith's death

I'm sure it was very sad and illegal, but it was a two-way gunfight, with bullets flying on both sides -- not to mention that Joseph Smith had an armed paramilitary group at his command, which he called on to defend him (but it didn't get there in time). It's really not what is ordinarily called a "lynching"... AnonMoos (talk) 08:32, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

No reply for over a week, so removing Joseph Smith from template. AnonMoos (talk) 16:38, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Lynching supporter

Benjamin Tillman was a loud and proud lynching supporter... AnonMoos (talk) 09:06, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Oops, didn't see he was already included. AnonMoos (talk) 16:35, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Multiple victims

There are several instances of lynchings involving two or three victims in the List of lynchings section, as well as others in the Multiple victims section. It seems to me that most of the incidents in the Multiple victims section, often described as "riots" or "massacres", are qualitatively different from those in which one, two or even three victims were killed together. Part of that difference is based on whether the victims were seized and killed together, or whether there were a series of separate killings closely related in space and time. I would argue that incidents in which more than one victim was killed in a single action should go in the List of lynchings section. However, an easier distinction is to just say that any incident with more than one victim belongs in the Multiple victims section. Any thoughts? - Donald Albury 13:48, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

• Donald Albury, I've been wrestling with that myself and I'm not sure. I wrote up Lynching of George Hughes, and Sherman Riot redirects there, but if more than one person had died that night, the placement of the link would depend on how closely related the separate murders were, I guess. Your proposal would move Steve Long to the "single" list, and I think that's valid. But much depends on what sourcing we have and how the actual article is written up. I have it easy, writing up what are mostly individual incidents, and yeah, you put your finger on a sore spot and I don't really know what to to. Drmies (talk) 17:16, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Drmies I added the Lynching of Paul Reed and Will Cato to the template as a single lynching because the two men were tried on consecutive days for the same crime, taken from jail together, and chained to a stump and burned together. I didn't think about the three other men who were shot to death in the following days, and the others who were beaten. (See Lynching of Paul Reed and Will Cato#Consequences.) The men who were shot are not described anywhere that I have seen as lynching victims, but there may be an argument for listing the article in the Multiple victims section. - Donald Albury 23:29, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
    • Donald Albury, you wrote that? Yes, you did--what a fine, fine piece of work. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 14:49, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
    • Haha, I thought you meant burned outhouse, but you meant burned-out house! Sorry, I should have read more carefully. Drmies (talk) 15:27, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
      • (edit conflict)Drmies, I had good sources to work with. That was just the second time I've written in WP about a lynching, but I was drawn to the subject because I had heard about if from my grandmother when I young, and then my mother got the Moseley book from the Bulloch County Historical Society a couple years ago. For some reason, my great-grandfather took all of his children, including my then 4-year-old grandmother, into Statesboro that day, and she witnessed at least part of the events. My recollection of what she said about it is not very clear to me, but consistent with what I read in the sources. Oh, BTW, it was the farm house that burned out, not the outhouse that burned. I took "out" out to remove the ambiguity. - Donald Albury 15:45, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
        • Donald Albury, I guess most Southern families have such a story somewhere; my wife's family certainly does (hill country, Mississippi). How did your grandmother feel? Did you see "This Is Her First Lynching"?

          I wrote a bunch of these articles from this source, so for starters I had just a name, a date, and a place (and in one case the date was incorrect). Then Google and JSTOR help me find the rest of the sourcing. Lynching of Leonard Woods is somewhat typical: a couple of old sources, then I find a big fat article that has the required material, but I don't always find a lot of material from Google Books that allow me to mix up the sources a bit. (BTW, if you have a moment, look at Lynching of Joseph Upchurch and then read that 2013 article. There's a follow-up that I can share with you later.) I did, by chance, get an email from Rutgers UP, which is having a sale, and Dora Apel's Imagery of Lynching was in there, so I ordered that--there's a ton in there, but it's not accessible via Google Books. Drmies (talk) 15:59, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

          • Drmies, "This Is Her First Lynching" does seem apt. I had the feeling that my great-grandfather knew there was going to be a lynching and took his children to town to see it. As for the Upchurch killing, stories conveyed by someone a couple of generations removed from an event may differ from contemporary accounts. I remember how much the stories I heard in the 1960s about the Rosewood massacre differed from what is in the article. - Donald Albury 16:39, 28 May 2021 (UTC)