A less emotional and much better researched study than any others I have read is Lethal Punishment: Lynchings And Legal Executions in the South by Margaret Vandiver . She finds that 2805 people died at the hands of lynch mobs between 1882 and 1930, both legal and extralegal, and that the South (former Confederate states) accounted for about 74 percent of all lynchings between 1882 and 1968. Clearly, lynching was more of an institution, legal and otherwise, in the South. J South ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.