The US population in 1880 was 50,189,209, and the US population in 2003 was 291,028,000 (<http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/06statab/ pop.pdf>). Adjusted for changes in US population but unadjusted for changes in proportion of Blacks, 40 lynchings in 1882 would be roughly equivalent to 240 lynchings in 2003. But lynchings, unlike gang-related homicides, were political violence, so looking at the average over 86 years, between 1882 and 1968, doesn't reveal the nature of lynchings nor their impacts on Blacks. The largest number of lynchings occurred in in 1892, when 161 Blacks and 69 whites were killed, shortly after the end of Reconstruction. Lynchings and other kinds of white terrorism in the South were perpetrated for the purpose of restoring white supremacy in the South and finishing off any resistance to it. Once the Southern white elite achieved that goal, aided by the federal inaction, lynchings began to decline.
Also, the figure of 3,446 lynchings of Blacks between 1882 and 1968 (which probably misquotes a conservative estimate of 3,437 made by the Tuskegee Institute), does not include the number of those who were killed in race riots. It should be kept in mind that, as lynchings declined, race riots increased in the early twentieth century: "Although lynchings were decreasing slightly by the turn of the century, race riots were perceptibly on the increase" (at <http:// www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html>). That is because of the racist response to the Great Migration of Blacks from rural areas to urban areas, from the South to the North, especially in the climate of the aftermath of World War 1. Race riots killed Blacks on a larger scale than lynchings, though race riots gave Blacks better chances to fight back: e.g., in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, "fifty whites and between 150 and 200 Blacks were killed" (Robert A. Gibson, "The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950," 1979, <http://www.yale.edu/ ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html>).
As for the rate of gang-related violence, between 1976 and 2002: 25.4% of homicide victims under 18, 67.4% of homicide victims ages 18-34, 5.9% of homicide victims ages 35-49, 1.3% of homicide victims 50 or older were killed under gang-related circumstances ("Homicide Trends in the U.S.," <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/ teens.htm>). Factoring in the age distribution of all homicide victims, 39% of them are the results of gang-related violence. 57.9% of victims of gang-related homicides are white, 38.7% of victims are Black, and the rest are put into the category of "other" ("Trend by Race," <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm>). A large majority of homicide victims are male, and a majority of gang-related homicide victims (64% in the case of Los Angeles County <http:// www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/1376.html>) are gang members themselves.
Comparing gang-related homicides and lynchings and other race-related political violence is essentially comparing apples and oranges. Unlike lynchings and race riots, though, Black victims don't outnumber white ones in gang-related violence nationwide.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>