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Lynching in the Mid‐Atlantic, 1882–1940

This essay explores lynching in the Mid‐Atlantic region of the United States between 1880 and 1940. The Mid‐Atlantic States include: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Although the Mid‐Atlantic had a history of both racism and mob violence, lynching episodes in the region were relatively rare during this period in comparison to acts of mob violence in the American South. Understanding why certain regions experienced a dearth of lynching episodes can be just as illuminating as studying states or regions with high levels of mob violence. This essay argues that the lynchings that did take place in the Mid‐Atlantic illustrate that racism and ethnic prejudice could turn violent in the North as well as the South. Why more African Americans and immigrants were not lynched in the Mid‐Atlantic can be traced to the responses of local legal authorities and to the rise of state systems of criminal justice that targeted African Americans and Italians with the death penalty. This pattern is further reinforced by variations within the Mid‐Atlantic itself. Maryland, where the state legal system executed fewer men, had more lynchings than any other Mid‐Atlantic State. New York, with its massive Sing Sing prison and frequent application of the death penalty, had many fewer lynching episodes between 1880 and 1940.