The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

Mary Turner was one of at least 11 victims in Georgia’s Lowndes and Brooks counties during what became known as the Lynching Rampage of 1918.

The violence, known as the Slocum Massacre, was incited by a rumored uprising that never happened.

In 1906, two of Atlanta’s most prominent newspapermen committed an act that many of today’s journalists would consider a sin.

The language used in news coverage of lynchings often sought to justify the deaths of Black victims to white readers.

Kentucky newspapers contributed to a climate of terror by calling the victims bad negroes, “barbaric” or lazy and promiscuous.

Lynchings, were a form of racial terror, said historian Elijah Gaddis, an assistant professor of history at Auburn University. No state used the tactic more than Mississippi.

The Yazoo City Herald, a white-owned newspaper, covered lynchings, sometimes delivering inconsistent or problematic reporting.

In Waco, Texas, up to 15,000 white men, women and children, elected officials and law enforcement would gather to watch public lynchings of Black men.

In January 1900, George Henry White, the only Black man within the U.S. House, proposed a bill to ban lynching. During his speech, he was interrupted and the bill never went past the House Judiciary Committee.