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The Ozark Historical Review

Keywords

Lynching, Arkansas, Death Penalty, Mob Rule

Abstract

“Compromise with Lawlessness”: The Relationship between Lynching and the Death Penalty in Arkansas, 1895–1925 examines the complex relationship between extralegal lynching and state-sanctioned capital punishment in Arkansas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While existing scholarship often characterizes the decline of lynching and expansion of capital punishment as a straightforward substitution, this article argues that the Arkansas experience was more dynamic, with lynching and legal execution functioning as competing and sometimes complementary mechanisms for satisfying demands for racialized justice and social control. Through an examination of the 1898 lynching of Bud Hayden in Texarkana and the 1901 execution of John Wesley in Arkadelphia, the article demonstrates how public pressure, racial violence, and state authority could converge around capital punishment. The temporary restoration of public executions for rape in 1901 further blurred the distinction between mob violence and legal punishment, producing what contemporary observers characterized as a “compromise with lawlessness.” By examining execution statistics, racial disparities, and changes in Arkansas's capital punishment laws, the article situates these individual cases within broader patterns of punishment and racial control. This demonstrates that Arkansas's transition from lynching toward increasingly standardized and private executions was neither linear nor simply substitutive but reflected an evolving negotiation between popular demands for vengeance and the state's efforts to assert legitimate authority over punishment.

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