Franklin Zimring (2003) examines the relationship between the history of lynchings and current capital punishment in the United States, arguing that the connection between them is a tradition of self-defense. He adequately shows an association between historical lynchings and modern executions, although this article presents additional evidence that would help strengthen this argument, but other areas of Zimring's argument are not as well supported. Its attitudinal and behavioral measures of modern vigilantism are insufficient and could easily be interpreted as measuring other constructs. Also missing from Zimring's analysis is an explanation of the transition of executions from government control in the past to executions as representing community control in the present. Finally, I argue that Zimring leaves aside any meaningful discussion of the role of race, both in past lynchings and in modern executions. To support my argument, using recent research, I will show how race played an important role in both past lynchings and modern executions and how the changing shape of race relations can explain the transition from lynchings to legal executions. . Zimring first examines the relationship between past lynchings and modern executions. Regionally, it shows that past lynchings were more concentrated in the western and southern regions, which currently execute the most people. Zimring then explores whether this connection holds at the state level. It shows that this is the case, that modern executions are heavily concentrated in states with histories of high lynching rates and that states with historically low levels of lynchings had lower levels of modern executions. I agree with Zimring's assertion that there is a connection between lynchings and modern executions. ..... middle of paper ......sm: The crystallization of a kinder, gentler anti-black ideology. 15-44 in Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change, edited by SA Tuch and J. Marten. Greenwood, CT: Praeger. Jacobs, David and Jason T. Carmichael. 2002. “The Political Sociology of the Death Penalty: A Pooled Time Series Analysis.” American Sociological Review 67: 109-131. Jacobs, David, Jason T. Carmichael and Stephanie Kent. 2005. “Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, and Death Sentences.” American Sociological Review 70: 656-677. Messner, Steven F., Eric P. Baumer, and Richard Rosenfeld. 2006. “Distrust of Government, Tradition of Vigilante, and Support for Capital Punishment.” » Law & Society Review 40: 559-586. Zimring, Franklin. 2003. “The Vigilante Tradition and Modern Executions.” Chapter 5 in The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. Oxford University Press.