Lynchings, Labour, and Cotton in the U.S. South: A Reappraisal of Tolnay and Beck

I examine lynchings of African Americans in the US South from 1882 to 1930, more than twenty years after Tolnay and Beck's (1995) seminal work. The authors claim that lynchings were due to economic competition between African American and white cotton workers. I confirm much of their original hypothesis with new data and techniques, and expand upon it, finding that another explanation, Williamson's (1997) psychosexual one, might complement the economic one. I also discover that, in line with an economic competition framework, lynchings predict more black out-migration from 1920 to 1930, and higher state-level wages.