From 1877 to 1950, more than 4,400 black men, women, and children were lynched by white mobs, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
Some historians say the violence against thousands of black people who were lynched after the Civil War is the precursor to the vigilante attacks and abusive police tactics still used against black people today, usually with impunity.
Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit that tries to address the nation’s racist legacy through activism and education, said the roots of the protests lie in the reality that the country has not yet come to terms with its brutal history of slavery, lynching, and continued oppression of black people.
“We have never confronted our nation’s greatest burden following two centuries of enslaving black people, which is the fiction that black people are not fully evolved and are less human, less worthy, and less deserving than white people,” Stevenson said.
“This notion of white supremacy is what fueled a century of racial violence against black people, thousands of lynchings, mass killings, and a presumption of dangerousness and guilt that persists to this day,” Stevenson continued.