Thousands of lynching victims were recorded in the US South at the end of the 19th century, the vast majority of whom were African Americans. Sam Holt, a black farm labourer killed by a white mob on 23 April 1889, was one of them. 'The basic pattern of racial violence in the South was largely determined by the attempts of landowners and commercial farmers to gain mastery over the world turned upside down by the end of slavery. Emancipation raised two dire threats that struck the heart of the former slave society: the emergence of a free market in labor and the plantocracy's lost grip over land. Landowners across the South mobilized against these twin threats, employing all mechanisms at their disposal to regain their former dominance.'
Ivan Evans, Culture of Violence. Racial Violence and the origins of segregation in South Africa and the American South ( 2009) p 58