A Frightful Vengeance: Lynching and Capital Punishment in Turn-of-the-Century Colorado

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/3b591884d

Abstract

Having abolished the death penalty four years prior, Coloradoans lynched three men--Thomas Reynolds, Calvin Kimblern, and John Preston Porter, Jr.-- in 1900, hanging two and burning one at the stake. This thesis argues that these lynchings both represented and supported Colorado's culture of lynching, a combination of social and cultural connections in which lynching was used as a force for social cohesion and control. Rather than being a distinct frontier culture of lynching, Colorado's culture was a slightly attenuated version of the racially-motivated culture of lynching in the Jim Crow South. The three lynchings in 1900 lay at the heart of the political debate over the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1901. After reinstatement, lynchings gradually died away as the state successfully funneled its culture of lynching into state-sanctioned executions.

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