The Lynching Dot Map

Charles Seguin, an assistant professor of sociology at Penn State University, has created an interactive map which shows every lynching victim in the USA from 1883-1930. Every dot on the Lynching Dot Map shows one victim of lynching by mobs of white men.

Charles Seguin is currently researching and writing a book about the history and politics of lynching in America. The Lynching Dot Map was made in collaboration with David Rigby, Alison Appling. The dots on the map are colored by the race of the victim. You can click on the individual dots on the map to view the name of the mapped victim.

You can also view the same data as a choropleth map on Lynching in the USA 1883-1930. On this interactive map individual counties are colored based on the number of lynching victims. You can click on the counties to read the names of the lynching victims in that county between 1883-1930.


You can learn more about this disgusting episode in America's history on Lynching in America. Between 1877 and 1950 more than 4,000 African Americans were lynched in the United States. The Equal Justice Initiative collaborated with Google to publish an in-depth examination of this terrible episode in American history. A Lynching in America includes interviews, audio recordings and reports into the history of lynchings in the United States. It also includes an interactive map documenting reported lynchings across the country.

Individual counties are colored on the interactive map by the reported number of lynchings in the county. You can also hover over individual states on the map to view the total number of lynchings reported in the whole state. The white dots on the map provide links to harrowing narrated tales of lynchings against individual African Americans.

A Lynching in America uses data from the Equal Justice Initiative's report 'Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror', based on extensive research into the period between the Civil War and World War II.




During the 1890's mobs of white men killed around 9 people per month. Monroe Work Today also has an interactive map of lynchings in the United States. The Monroe Work Today map shows where lynchings took place from 1835 to 1964. The map plots the locations of incidents of white mob violence across the whole of the country. Different colored markers on the map indicate whether the victims of this violence were black, Chinese, Native American or other groups of Americans.

You can select individual markers on the map to learn more about each individual instance of white mob violence. Each instance also includes links to the sources for the mapped lynching. A timeline at the bottom of the map plots the number of lynchings over time. This timeline is interactive and can be used to filter the lynchings shown on the map by any date range.

The data for the map builds on the research of the black sociologist Monroe Nathan Work, who published biannual lynching reports at the beginning of the 20th century. His reports have been enhanced and referenced with more modern research. Alongside the interactive map Monroe Work Today provides a detailed look at the life and work of Monroe Work and the history of white mob violence in the United States.