At least according to Bryan Stevenson, whom the NYT reports has, through his organization, Equal Justice Institute, published a new report (summary) (.pdf) on lynching in the south, finding that it was much worse than previously documented.
1919 lynching of John Hartfield announced in advance.
It was in fact institutionalized terrorism, which triggered the migration of blacks out of the south. In some counties, almost the entire black population left after a lynching.
All of this was well known at the time, yet national legislation was resisted, successfully, on the grounds of state's rights or some other drivel. Lest all this be forgotten, Mr. Stevenson has a plan, according to NYT:
Next comes the process of selecting lynching sites where the organization plans to erect markers and memorials, which will involve significant fund-raising, negotiations with distrustful landowners and, almost undoubtedly, intense controversy.
"intense controversy?" Hmmm ... you don't say. As the report summary states:
Many of the communities where lynchings took place have gone to great lengths to erect markers and monuments that memorialize the Civil War, the Confederacy, and historical events during which local power was violently reclaimed by white Southerners.
There aren't any, or not very many, monuments to lynching victims, which creates a distorted view of history, specifically the very false impression that lynching was a haphazard unsystematic event, carried out by
a few bad apples, as the expression goes.
A small quibble: lest anyone think that lynching was limited to the south, be disabused of that notion. Possibly the best known photograph of a lynching, that with the sneering white guy pointing at the two hanged men, was taken in Marion, Indiana in 1930. And even the now-Deep Blue state of Oregon has its own lynching incidents, as well as a constitution which barred African-Americans from entering the state.