Freakonomics

YEARS | LYNCHINGS OF BLACKS

1890–1899 | 1,111

1900–1909 | 791

1910–1919 | 569

1920–1929 | 281

1930–1939 | 119

1940–1949 | 31

1950–1959 | 6

1960–1969 | 3

Bear in mind that these figures represent not only lynchings attributed to the Ku Klux Klan but the total number of reported lynchings. The statistics reveal at least three noteworthy facts. The first is the obvious decrease in lynchings over time. The second is the absence of a correlation between lynchings and Klan membership: there were actually more lynchings of blacks between 1900 and 1909, when the Klan was dormant, than during the 1920s, when the Klan had millions of members—which suggests that the Ku Klux Klan carried out far fewer lynchings than is generally thought.

Third, relative to the size of the black population, lynchings were exceedingly rare. To be sure, one lynching is one too many. But by the turn of the century, lynchings were hardly the everyday occurrence that they are often remembered as. Compare the 281 victims of lynchings in the 1920s to the number of black infants who died as a result of malnutrition, pneumonia, diarrhea, and the like. As of 1920, about 13 out of every 100 black children died in infancy, or roughly 20,000 children each year—compared to 28 people who were lynched in a year. As late as 1940, about 10,000 black infants died each year.

What larger truths do these lynching figures suggest? What does it mean that lynchings were relatively rare and that they fell precipitously over time, even in the face of a boom in Klan membership?

The most compelling explanation is that all those early lynchings worked. White racists—whether or not they belonged to the Ku Klux Klan—had through their actions and their rhetoric developed a strong incentive scheme that was terribly clear and terribly frightening. If a black person violated the accepted code of behavior, whether by talking back to a trolley driver or daring to try to vote, he knew he might well be punished, perhaps by death.

So by the mid-1940s, when Stetson Ke

But if the Ku Klux Klan of the 1940s wasn’t uniformly violent, what was it? The Klan that Stetson Ke

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The radio producers began to write four weeks’ worth of programs in which Superman would wipe out the Ku Klux Klan.

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The Grand Dragon promised to expose the Judas in their midst.

“The damage has already been done,” said one Klansman.