Amy Bailey

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Practicing What They Preach? Lynching and
Religion in the American South, 1890 1930
Amy Bailey Department of Sociology
Sociology 496 Honors Senior Seminar 30 October
2007
2
PERSONAL BACKGROUND

• Doctoral candidate in sociology
• Research/teaching interests inequality, race,
  historical sociology, veterans
• Current Looking for a faculty job, finishing my
  dissertation, work on Prof. Tolnays lynching
  project
• Undergraduate University of California, Santa
  Cruz

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ORIGIN OF RESEARCH PROJECT

• Pilot testing for current lynching project.
• Prof. Tolnay gave a talk and mentioned that he
  had always wondered about the role of religion.
• Prof. Hirschman was teaching a research
  incubator class, so I took the opportunity to
  work on the early stages of the paper.

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SOCIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE

• Explore the role of religion in ethnic violence
  and hate crimes.
• Ireland, former Yugoslavia, present-day Iraq,
  Islamic immigrants to Europe, Israel-Palestine
• What role do religious institutions or the local
  religious economy play?
• What controls the behavior of the aggressive
  ethnic group?

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CENTRAL HYPOTHESES OR QUESTIONS

• Test two competing hypotheses about the role that
  religion might play
• Religion as carrier of ethnic identity places
  with more religious membership would have higher
  lynching rates.
• Religion and lynching as substitutable means of
  social control places with more religious
  membership would have lower lynching rates.

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METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

• Units of Analysis Counties with a separate
  analysis for each decade.
• County boundaries changed over this time period
  (Modifiable Areal Unit Problem)
• Example 46 counties in Florida in 1890. By
  1930, there were 65.
• Statistical analyses (negative binomial
  regression).

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METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

• Type of Evidence Used
• Census summary statistics on each county percent
  black, total population.
• Agricultural census percent of acres in cotton,
  price of cotton, white farm tenancy.
• Census of religious bodies numerical data (ex
  number of members in each reporting denomination)
  as well as denominational histories.
• Prior violence against blacks.

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METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

• Religious (predictor) variables
• Overall percent of county residents who belong to
  religious organizations
• Local religious competition
• Percent church members in organizations w/
  headquarters outside the South.
• Percent of all blacks who belong to
  black-controlled denominations.
• Percent of all members in mixed race religious
  organizations.

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RESULTS/FINDINGS

• Counties with higher rates of religious
  membership have lower incidence of lynching, net
  of all other factors.
• Counties with higher levels of religious
  diversity (a less crystalized local power
  structure) sometimes have more lynching.
• These findings support theory about religion and
  lynching as substitutable means of social
  control.

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RESULTS/FINDINGS

• NONE of the measures that identified the fusion
  of religious and ethnic identities had any
  statistical effect.

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GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

• Despite overtly racist rhetoric/theology and a
  refusal to publicly condemn lynching, organized
  religion appears to have a suppressive effect on
  levels of lethal racial violence.
• Organized religion and lynching appear to be
  substitutable forms of social control.

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CHALLENGES OR SURPRISES

• Despite WEEKS of library research, coding
  denominations, and data entry, results indicated
  that there was no effect.
• Working with so many data sets (three for 1890
  and four each decade for 1900, 1910, and 1920)
  was lots of work.
• Collaboration and its challenges extra project
  for both of us, we know different statistical
  programs, both early career.

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FUTURE DIRECTIONS

• Characteristics of lynch victims Are they
  systematically different from the general
  population? Does this vary with context?
• Lynching as a case of ethnic violence (with Stew
  Tolnay) Why not genocide?
• Influence of emergence of early 20th Century
  race blind Pentecostal movement on race
  relations and other social institutions.