This finely detailed statistical study of lynching in ten southern states shows that economic and status concerns were at the heart of that violent
practice. Stewart Tolnay and E. M. Beck empirically test competing explanations of the causes of lynching, using U.S. Census and historical voting data and a newly constructed inventory of southern lynch victims. Among their surprising findings: lynching responded to fluctuations in the price of cotton, decreasing in frequency when prices rose and increasing when they fell.
 

Stewart E. Tolnay, a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at the State University of New York at Albany, is coeditor of The Changing American Family: Sociological and Demographic Perspectives.E.M. Beck, professor and head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Georgia, is coauthor of Industrial Invasion of Nonmetropolitan America.
 

— Gustavus Myers Center