The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States

Content Warning: This chapter includes an outdated and offensive term for people with disabilities. This language is replicated in this guide only in direct quotation.

Capital punishment is designed to safeguard the community by removing individuals who pose a threat to others. Wells suggests that executing an individual with a disability or a mental health condition is widely considered morally reprehensible. However, lynching, enacted by mobs, does not follow social conventions.

Wells draws attention to two instances of lynching that prove this statement. In 1892, the Arkansas Democrat published a story about a Black man named Hamp Biscoe and his wife and teenage son. Biscoe, a hard-working farmer, disagreed with a white man who demanded $100 for showing Biscoe a farm and organizing its sale. When Biscoe refused to pay, the man sued, and Biscoe’s farm was taken from him. Losing the farm caused Biscoe to become paranoid, and he developed a reputation for instability. When a white man took down one of Biscoe’s fences and drove through his property, Biscoe grew irate and ran the man from his land. The white man secured a warrant, and Biscoe and his family were arrested.

A group of white men went to the jail that night, and the guards handed Biscoe and his family over to the mob.