Shocking as it might be to you Lin, I know about these things because I am a country music fan, and an especially big fan of the Dixie Chicks.

In Minnesota where I live, there were two notorious incidences regarding racial hanging/lynchings: the first was the execution of 38 Santee Sioux by public hanging in Mankato in 1862, and second was the Duluth lynchings of 3 black men accused of raping a white woman.

Other than that, the records show a handful of white lynchings that occurred here, victims of the sort you mention above, Brian. But the number of American Indians murdered by whites over the years in Minnesota often went unrecorded by the white record keepers.

Race murders didn't just happen in the South, and they are a legacy every American shares, and ought to know about. But I wouldn't go bragging around about what a good idea it is for a vigilante mob to lynch someone who:

"...had to answer for the wicked that he done."

In a just, fair, and free society, the accused doesn't answer to a lynch mob. They answer to a jury of their peers.