Comparative Lynching Data: Black & Chinese Victims

This visualization compares the annual count of lynchings of Black Americans with incidents of anti-Chinese violence in the United States. While both represent forms of racialized mob violence, they occurred in different geographic and social contexts: anti-Black lynchings were concentrated in the South during the Jim Crow era, while anti-Chinese violence was concentrated in the West during the exclusion era. The second chart shows per capita rates during the overlap era (1875–1920), the period when both datasets have data. During this overlap era, a Chinese man in the American West was over three times more likely to be lynched than a Black man living in the American South (2.59 per 100,000 vs. 0.78 per 100,000, a ratio of 3.32). The third chart shows population trends alongside annual violence incidents, allowing for comparison of demographic changes with patterns of racial violence.

Sources:
Black lynching data: Bailey, Amy Kate, and Stewart E. Tolnay. "CSDE Lynching Database." Accessed February 8, 2019.
Chinese violence data: John Crow Project dataset.
Population data: U.S. Census Bureau, decennial census data (1850-1950).