It appears there are quite a few historians, for example, Civil War and Civil Rights Historians, who list a long set of references, of which said references, list other references.
These references of history books are apparently more poltical and social commentary mixed in with some facts by the authors.
The most current and lucrative historical topics are Slavery and Lynching, of which, appear to result in more book sales and even Slavery museums funded with public and private dollars.
A lot of reporting has been made in recent news about "Black Lynchings" with the total number being reported, higher and higher, each year. These reports and "statistics" have been provided almost exclusively by Civil Rights Advocates who also have a financial incentive in regards to funding their non-profit organizations (with 5 and 6-figure salaries)and also their projects like Civil Rights Museums and even tourist attractions like Slave Museums and Slave Ships.
Unfortunately for them, this hyping of "lynching" stats doesn't even match their own ever-growing statistical "lynching" numbers. According to the below references, at the height of lynching between the years 1,890 to 1,900, there were "supposedly" around 175 lynchings of Blacks per year.
Yet, using 8 million as the Total Average Black US population between 1890 to 1900, that averages to be one lynching per 45,000 Blacks. This number is in the same ballpark as getting hit by lightning.
On some lynchings, they can say with great detail, "he got lynched for not addressing the police officer with the title 'mister' ". Yet with most lynchings, they have no idea the name of the person, or the reason why they were lynched, (20%). It seems like the reporting was all over the map.
BELOW ARE SOME RESPONSES TO LYNCHING NEWS ARTICLES
--- You are Erasing History? Or Erasing "Making it up as we go along" History?
The more questions that are asked.... those 4,000 lynchings seems like a compilation of newspapers "gossip" columns.
--- Back then, there were far fewer people; everyone knew everyone else. Hence, how can a lynching be published with partial info in a newspaper???? Unless it was just gossip to sell newspapers and keep everyone interested? If there was ZERO CRIME, ZERO SLEEPING AROUND, ZERO TABLOID, back then, what are you going to write about to keep people PAYING for a newspaper?????
--- When they list total counts of lynchings by state, year, and type, shouldn't they have solid raw data to back that up?
How can they possibly list all these overall lynching counts, but not have names readily available in that same news article?
How did that journalist or reporter write that story? Did they write,
"Hey, there was a lynching in this city for this reason, but that's all I know. I can't tell you the name and where he lived or if he had a wife and children or who he worked for. Yes, this is a super small town, and everyone knows each other, but sorry, I heard it from someone at the saloon, and I am just reporting what I heard."
Wouldn't it be great to see all news articles on 4,000 lynchings because how can anyone imagine a reporter writing something like that? You have all these historical researchers who can give all these lynching counts and statistics, but they have no individual details.
--- But the fact remains, how do you write a newspaper article about a lynching with no basic info like, (a) Who was lynched, (b) For what reason were they lynched, (c) where the lynching happened and (d) when did the lynching happen. If all you can write is "I heard there was a lynching in the city of blah, blah, and it happened a little while ago,", then you have to ask, "How can this news article be taken seriously?"
And what about lynching because of Murder? No information on who was murdered, why they were murdered and how and with what weapon? Where is that family of the murdered? How in the world can you write that 40% of lynchings were due to Murder, yet don't list the other vital facts of the Murder that led to a lynching?
Finally, the functional and publicly available data sets contain only a fraction of the actual data recorded. The Tuskegee data are available on the web by year and race or by state and race for the entire period but not by state, year, race, and victim's name. The same is true for the data contained in NAACP (1919). This would make matching names to Census and
other data and estimation using panel data, e.g., random or fixed-effects models, difficult
without adding further information from the underlying records - Converging to a National Lynching Database: Recent Developments and the Way Forward (PDF Download Available)
--- More Questions: If 40% of the lynchings were Murder and most were in Southern states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, would not Blacks have to be murdering more Whites back then to deserve a Lynching?
Does the above make sense back then in the 1890s when there was almost Zero Crime, almost Zero Divorce, no Welfare, no Food Stamps?
How can you have all these Lynchings in the South due to Murder, yet almost zero crimes like Robbery, theft, etc. Does that make sense? Forty Percent Lynches on Murder? Or, who was Murdered and list to me the demographics of those victims if you can eventually show the names lynched?????
If some Blacks in the 1890s really hated Whites back then, why not also steal, rob, or have massive theft? This lynching data doesn't make sense with overall crime almost being non-existent back then.
#1 - WPA Narratives are basically responses to sneaky polling questions.
#2 - WPA Narratives are basically cherry picked and use only the most sensational story tellers.
#3 - WPA Narratives have no way to verify their story.
#4 - WPA Narratives have no way to verify if their stories were not "sensationalized".
#5 - WPA Narratives are very easy to add a fake sentence to an informant.
Unlike what you see in Today's world with lots to read about, most people, back then, worked a lot of hours of which was physical labor, not office labor. Moreover, there were No Electric Lights to read during the day or night. There was no Internet for source fact-checking or even basic communication. Everything was by letter (via horseback) or word of mouth. Hence, not much to read in regards to an expensive-to-print newspaper to justify spending money buying one.
In other words, Money was tight back then.
Printing a newspaper wasn't that easy back then, and there was way more work to print a news paperback than pressing a button as you can Today.
And
in the 1860s, many newspapers were only four (4) pages long, all text.
Nevertheless, Newspaper Reporters had to keep their job. Hence, why not write anything and everything you hear?
