1916 was a particularly violent year in American history regarding racial violence and lynching. While the exact number of lynchings that occurred on November 7, 1916, is unclear, records from the NAACP and the Tuskegee Institute confirm that at least 50 African Americans were lynched in 1916.

Context of Racial Violence in 1916

• Lynching was a brutal tool of racial terror, primarily in the Southern United States, used to enforce white supremacy and suppress Black progress.
• 1916 saw numerous high-profile lynchings, including the horrific case of Jesse Washington, a 17-year-old Black teenager lynched in Waco, Texas, on May 15, 1916. His brutal murder was widely publicized and led to national outrage.
• The NAACP actively documented and protested these lynchings, using photography and publications to expose the racial violence.
• This year was part of the broader “Red Summer” era of racial terror that lasted into the 1920s, culminating in mass racial violence like the Tulsa Race Massacre (1921).

Lynchings began to decline in the 1930s with increased activism and the NAACP’s anti-lynching campaigns, but federal anti-lynching legislation was not officially passed until 2022, when the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act was signed into law.