In the decades after the Civil War, as Southern white elites faced unanticipated pro-Black electoral opposition, many turned to violence. In “Political Foundations of Racial Violence in the Post-Reconstruction South,” published this spring in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, SPA Assistant Professor Jhacova Williams, with co-author Patrick A. Testa of Tulane University, document how unexpected Democratic weakness predicted higher rates of lynching, at least until Jim Crow laws solved the problem for them by institutionalizing disenfranchisement.

After the Civil War, defeat, the abolition of slavery, and Reconstruction-era manhood suffrage briefly expanded Black political power in the South, granting over one million Black men the right to vote.

“To be readmitted to the Union, southern states were required to include manhood suffrage in their constitutions,” said Williams. “With this right, … Black men voted at high rates for the liberal [Republican] party, thereby handing another loss to the conservative [Democratic] party. This final one-two-three punch, unfortunately, resulted in racial terror and violence across the South to regain political power and control.”

Using county-level data, the authors show the political mechanics behind this grim chapter of American history. Counties where the Democratic (then-conservative) party unexpectedly lost presidential votes experienced significantly more lynchings in the following four years.

Importantly, the study distinguishes between routine electoral competition and surprise defeats. The effect is concentrated in places with large Black populations where all-white Democratic elites had previously enjoyed comfortable margins. Those unexpected losses revealed novel elite vulnerability to pro-Black political opposition, which they often answered with intimidation and murder rather than institutional or legal solutions.

“As these acts of violence and intimidation reduced the participation of Black voters,” said Williams, “we note a reduction in these acts as state laws during the Jim Crow era were established and continued to disenfranchise Black voters.”

The paper also implicates the press, as many contemporary newspapers amplified narratives of Black criminality, transforming elite political frustration into mass violence.

“Newspapers frequently discussed Black crime [e.g., rape, murder, sexual assault] in a way to encourage lynch mobs, leading to more lynchings with more spectators,” said Williams. “Yet many scholars quickly provided evidence that lynchings were instead used to oppress Black individuals in many areas of life, including voting. These newspaper articles continued to fuel stereotypes about Black men, which resulted in their deaths without due process.”

Williams and Testa see a modern echo of this dynamic.

“I think we need to understand the importance of media and facts,” said Williams. “If the media is allowed to report distorted information to Americans, then our residents are misinformed. Our founding fathers enacted the First Amendment, which includes freedom of the press, because they understood its vital importance… If the press is inaccurate, we all lose!”

Williams is especially grateful for the opportunity to use new tools to gather quantitative evidence for classical qualitative claims.

“I am glad to have empirically shown what Ida B. Wells discussed,” said Williams. “I am honored that we were able to confirm her qualitative work using advances in data and empirical methods.”