GUEST: William Carrigan is Chair and Professor of History at Rowan University, author of The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836-1916…

The Equal Justice Initiative recently released a groundbreaking report on lynchings of African-Americans in the US and found that nearly 4,000 documented lynchings occurred between the years 1877 to 1950. While the gruesome incidents of murder are well established in our history books, the total number of African Americans lynched is about 700 higher than previously thought.

But that’s not all. Another grisly chapter in American history is the lynching of Mexicans. In numbers second only to African Americans, thousands of Mexicans were reportedly lynched in the late 1800s to early 1900s. With little remaining documentation, the lynchings of 547 Mexicans have been verified but the true number likely stands much higher.

Like William Carrigan’s book ‘Forgotten Dead’ at www.facebook.com/forgottendead.

GUEST: William Carrigan, together with his collaborator Clive Webb, has published numerous essays on the same topic, including Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928. Their op-ed in the Friday edition of the New York Times was entitled When Americans Lynched Mexicans.