Capital punishment arrived in the colony of North Carolina as part of English common law. Even misdemeanors warranted harsh corporal punishment and a long list of felonies qualified for the death penalty. People were executed not only for murder but also rape, theft, arson, and assault. 

White colonists quickly began using this “sanguinary code,” as the British called it, to enforce the institution of slavery. Colonial lawmakers created laws that applied only to the enslaved, and special courts, run by enslavers, ordered executions. For a time, the law even provided monetary compensation to enslavers whose chattel had been executed. 

In antebellum North Carolina, people could be executed for helping an enslaved person escape or joining an anti-slavery rebellion, among many other things.

According to death penalty historian Seth Kotch, in less than 50 years during the 1700s, North Carolina executed more than a hundred enslaved people. Meanwhile, the law empowered whites to punish their human “property” however they saw fit, while bands of white men patrolled for runaways.

In the century following American independence, many Northern states abolished the death penalty. But Southern states, focused on maintaining slavery, retained and expanded harshly punitive criminal codes. In antebellum North Carolina, people could be executed for helping an enslaved person escape or joining an anti-slavery rebellion, among many other things. 

Emancipation and Reconstruction offered brief hope that African Americans would be allowed full citizenship. But after the federal government withdrew its protection, white supremacists seized political power using mob violence, lynchings, and the death penalty. In fact, lynchings and executions were often nearly indistinguishable. 

Most lynching victims were Black, as were most of those executed. Lynchings were often inflicted in response to transgressions of the racial order. Similarly, executions were conducted almost exclusively as punishment for crimes against white people. And even when the accused escaped the lynch mob, he was likely to be tried swiftly by a jury composed of local white men and executed publicly by a white sheriff. 

Between 1865 and 1910, North Carolina executed 160 people, and at least 119 of them were African American. Another 14 were listed as race unknown.

In this Chapter

Death Row Profile: Guy LeGrande by CDPL Staff

In a crime that crossed racial lines, a prosecutor told the all-white jury that the strands of evidence would be twisted into a strong rope — a rope that could be used to kill a black defendant.

White Domination, Anti-Black Violence, and the Death Penalty in North Carolina: How the Myth of Black Criminality Has Always Justified Violence Against African Americans by Tim Tyson

George Floyd’s merciless execution was a reminder that white skin has long been a badge of authority to destroy black bodies. It’s a tradition that started in slavery and continues today in the form of police brutality and the death penalty.

In Black & White: Lynching & the Death Penalty were Two Sides of the Same Coin by CDPL Staff

Newspaper articles of the time show how lynching and court-imposed death sentences were were virtually indistinguishable. Some of the accused escaped lynch mobs only to be hanged based on scant evidence a few weeks later.

A Monument to Slavery Hangs Over N.C.’s Highest Court by CDPL Staff

A portrait of former North Carolina Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin, who distinguished himself as the author of one of the nation’s most extreme pro-slavery decisions, still looms large over the state Supreme Court.

SAFEKEEPING: A Linguistic Monument to a Racist Past by CDPL Staff

Even the language of criminal punishment is freighted with our nation’s history of injustice.

For Native Americans, First Genocide Then the Death Penalty by CDPL Staff

Most people know this country was “settled” by Europeans who waged war and subjected Native Americans to genocide. Less well known is how the government has used the death penalty to subjugate and terrorize Native people.

Black Women Have Always Been the Heart of the Death Penalty Abolition Movement by Dawn Blagrove

From the very beginnings of America, Black women have been at the center of the struggle for racial justice. Their work springs not out of esoteric principle or moral dilemma, but out of necessity. They are fighting for their families.