Answer:
The lynching, the death of people by the extrajudicial action of a crowd, has existed in the United States, especially since the end of the 18th century until the 60s of the 20th century. Between 1890 and the 1920s, in the southern states, the lynchings were mainly victims of black people, reaching its peak in 1892. Lynchings were also very common in the Old West, although in this case, the victims belonged to different ethnic groups or nationalities, such as Native Americans, Mexicans or Chinese.
The lynching of Henry Smith, a former slave accused of murdering a policeman's daughter, was one of the most famous. He was lynched in Paris, Texas, in 1893, for killing Myrtle Vance, the three-year-old daughter of a Texas police officer, after this policeman assaulted Smith. Smith did not come to be tried in a court. A large crowd witnessed the lynching, as was then usual, in the style of public executions. Henry Smith was tied to a wooden platform, tortured for 50 minutes with red-hot irons, and finally burned alive amid the cheers of more than 10,000 spectators.
The lynchings safeguarded the turn of power and were public manifestations of white power. The racial tensions had an economic basis. In trying to rebuild the plantation economy, the landlords needed to control the workers. In addition, agriculture suffered a rampant depression and the price of cotton continued to fall after the Civil War until the last decade of the nineteenth century. In many parts of the deep south there was a labor shortage, especially in the Mississippi Delta, in full development. Attempts to attract immigrant workers were unsuccessful, as immigrants did not last long in agricultural work. The lynchings were due to an attempt on the part of the landlords to terrorize the workers, especially when the time came to do accounts and they were unable to pay salaries, at the same time that they wanted to prevent the workers from leaving.
