![]() ![]() While doing research on other topics in the late 1800s and early 1900s Potter came across stories in old Nebraska newspapers about lynchings and near-lynchings in a number of communities. “All of these cases, in the later years, were in towns that had long out-grown their frontier period.” “More lynchings took place later and in central and eastern Nebraska communities than took place in these so-called wild towns of the West,” Potter said. (Read an excerpt from Potter's article here) Larger cities like Nebraska City and Omaha topped the list. Jim Potter, a historian writing in the Fall issue of the magazine Nebraska History discovered lynching was more common in the state’s larger and more developed areas. New research into lynching during Nebraska’s formative years shows that popularized notion was true in only a fraction of the cases when mobs took the law into their own hands. Whether your impression of the old American West comes from history classes or cowboy movies, the images many of us created of “hang ‘em high” justice in that new frontier probably involves a rope noose thrown over a tree limb in a remote place where there weren’t many judges or juries to sort out the details of the crime at hand. ![]()
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