Execution-style murder of a person, often by hanging. There were lynchings across the South in the 1800s and 1900s, usually by white mobs who killed black men, some of whom were accused of crimes. One lynching that occurred in Jackson killed a black woman who was accused of poisoning a white woman. The white woman's husband was later suspected of the poisoning.

The term is derived from the "vigilante justice" practiced by Captain William Lynch and his neighbors in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in the late 18th century. In the 19th century, lynching -- usually associated with hanging but also including tar and feathering, burning and other methods of killing -- became increasingly directed against African Americans. In the last 16 years of the 19th century, there were some 2,500 reported lynchings. The quest for federal laws against lynching was among the first crusades of the NAACP in the early decades of the 20th century.

Putting an accused person to death, usually by hanging without a lawful trial.

Lynching is a form of violence, usually murder, conceived of by its perpetrators as extra-legal punishment for offenders or as a terrorist method of enforcing social domination. It is characterized by a summary procedure ignoring, or even contrary to, the strict forms of law, notably judicial execution. Victims of lynching have generally been members of groups marginalized or vilified by society.