Regarding the NAACP estimate of lynchings -- they actually kept a count as
these things were happening. They listed date, place, and other information.
You can probably find it online. I don't know how they came up with the
number of lynchings prior to the founding of the group. See also "Lynching
in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930" by Brundage, W. Fitzhugh
(William Fitzhugh), University of Illinois Press, 1993.

This just came across my desk:

"The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."
---Mark Twain, 1907

Henry Wiencek