Correct. As were the Bork and Thomas confirmation hearings.
I should have said “public or semi-public nature,” as many of the earlier lynchings were more or less in the nature of a public ceremonial occasion, with open of tacit cooperation of local law enforcement.
I also think it is relevant that at minimum some large percentage, quite probably a majority, of those who were lynched thoroughly deserved execution for their crimes. While never in favor of vigilante justice, those who were lynched for murder or other heinous crimes have no particular moral right to decry the injustice.
Another percentage, impossible to quantify at this point in time, were innocent bystanders, or people who had committed a crime not deserving of execution. And their lynchings most certainly were a miscarriage of justice.
Lynchings, like the McCarthy Red Scare, have been exploited by anti-American ideologues to impugn the morality of the entire American system and society. While horrible things, both are pretty small beer in any rational historical or worldwide comparison of atrocities.
dude, I bet most blacks think the US was the only country to ever have slavery