In reading this piece which highlights the demographic change taking place in the United States, I was intrigued to read this passage from Wikipedia:

The lynching of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the Southwest has long been overlooked in American history. This may be because most historical records categorized Mexican, Chinese, and Native American lynching victims as white. Statistics of reported lynching in the United States indicate that, between 1882 and 1951, 4,730 persons were lynched, of whom 1,293 were white and 3,437 were black.The actual known amount of Mexicans lynched is unknown. It is estimated that at least 597 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 and 1928 (this is a conservative estimate due to lack of records in many reported lynchings).Mexicans were lynched at a rate of 27.4 per 100,000 of population between 1880 and 1930. This statistic is second only to that of the African American community during that period, which suffered an average of 37.1 per 100,000 population.Between 1848 to 1879, Mexicans were lynched at an unprecedented rate of 473 per 100,000 of population. These lynchings cannot be excused as merely “frontier justice”–of the 597 total victims, only 64 were lynched in areas which lacked a formal judicial system.

This is one of those little-known stories, like that of northern sundown towns, that is a reminder of America’s troubled past. Additionally, these lynchings took place in the same period of the expansion of sundown towns, suggesting the lynchings were part of a larger American turn against non-whites during this period.

Read the academic article behind the Wikipedia figures here.