"A novelty in the line of lynching" : female victims of lynching in the United States, 1882-1902.

Following an overview of the study in Chapter One, the second and third chapters include accounts of the lynchings of thirteen white and twenty-eight black women who were killed by mobs from 1882 to 1902. In some aspects of these lynchings, the experiences of white and black women were similar while other differences separated them. Of the women who died at the hands of mobs, the noted offenses of the white and black women fit within common categories for members of each race, but there were some racial distinctions that separate these cases. An examination of the similarities and differences in the motivations contributing to, the methods employed in, and the reaction to the lynching of white and black women provides a better picture of the complexities involved in the interaction between gender, race, and public violence at the close of the nineteenth century.