Texas was #3 on the list following Georgia and Mississippi.
What is the difference between a lynching and a murder?
“There must be legal evidence that a person was killed. That person must have met death illegally. A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing. The group must have acted under the pretext of service to justice, race or tradition.”
And lynching could result from relatively minor crimes:
One was charged with being accessory to burning a barn. One was accused to [sic] stealing cotton. A family of four, including two daughters, was slaughtered for clubbing an officer. Three were lynched for poisoning mules, and two for stealing hogs. Two were strung up for furnishing ammunition to a man who was resisting arrest.
This was from a description of lynchings for 1916. In four of these events the accused would later be proven innocent.
