White mobs and individuals lynched at least 2,000 more Black Americans than previously documented, according to a new report from the Equal Justice Initiative.
The group’s previous report on the subject, from 2015, detailed 4,500 racial terror lynchings from 1877 to 1950 — adding up to nearly 6,500 confirmed lynchings of Black people in the U.S. from 1865 to 1950.
The report was released amid weeks of nationwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality, following the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, in Minneapolis.
It also comes the week of Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S. — though, as the report notes, “it quickly became clear that emancipation in the United States did not mean equality for Black people.”
The report notes that white perpetrators of violence against Black people during Reconstruction were “almost never held accountable,” and many were even “celebrated.”
