The illegal killing of someone by mob action, especially by hanging, historically used as racial terrorism in the American South.
Named after Charles Lynch, an 18th-century Virginia planter who led extrajudicial punishments during the Revolutionary War. The term initially referred to any mob justice but became specifically associated with racial violence in the post-Civil War era.
The transformation of one man's surname into a term for racial terror demonstrates how language can carry historical trauma. What began as Revolutionary War vigilante justice evolved into systematic intimidation, showing how words absorb the darkest chapters of human behavior.
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