"Mob Victim": One Of The Untold Stories
             Lynching is an act of violence that took place in great numbers from the era of slavery to the times of the civil rights movements. The Webster's definition of lynch is to execute, extrasensory perception by hanging, without due process of law. Many innocent lives were taken because of the hatred that was accepted during the time that lynching was occurring at large. "Between 1882 and 1900 more than a thousand people in the South were killed by whites who took the law into their own hands. Lynchings peaked 1892, and in all years the overwhelming majority of victims were black men," (Hodes 176). These victims had not always done something wrong or committed a heinous crime, the charge could have been wholly fabricated, and they were accused of many things. Acting suspiciously, gambling, quarreling, adultery, grave robbing, race hatred; race troubles, aiding a murderer, rape, arguing with a white man, resisting a mob, inflammatory language, informing, slander, being obnoxious, courting a white woman, throwing stones, demanding respect, mistaken identity, unpopularity, voodoism, trying to vote, and voting for the wrong party are just a few of the unjust reasons where whites felt it was their place to take the law into their own hands. "Many mob victims were young black men who may have shown insufficient caution in avoiding situations that older blacks might have perceived as dangerous," (Brundage 81). The young men may have been able to avoid some of the situations that brought their lives to a premature end, but that does not mean that lynching should have been accepted. Lynching was a community event, "notices might be printed in local papers, rail road companies might add extra cars or run special trains, and children might be given the day off from school to attend," (Hodes 176). Whites made lynchings a common activity for the average whi...