RUI: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928

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Civilian violence against Mexicans has long been an endemic element of the history of the Southwest Borderlands. Although widely recognized in the Mexican community on both sides of the border, and among some scholars, the history of mob violence against Mexicans is largely unknown. Most of the scholarly works on lynching focus on African Americans. Next to African Americans, no minority group suffered lynching in greater numbers than did Mexicans. Although several inventories of lynching victims exist for southern states, no inventory of Mexican lynching victims currently exists. This project -- an analysis of the scale and impact of mob violence against Mexicans -- will challenge traditional understandings of racial violence and of violence in the West. The collaborative study will enable construct two significant databases. One will consist of Mexican lynching victims, and the other will hold data on criminal court records involving capital crimes and Mexicans. In addition to constructing the two databases, the principal investigators will enhance their understanding of the subject through the reading of hundreds of letters, memoirs, newspapers, organizational files and inventories, government records, diplomatic correspondence, oral interviews, and other contemporary records. The results of this research will be disseminated at scholarly conferences, via a website hosted by Rowan University, and through the publication of a monograph on the subject.