Assault in the Richmond Planet, 1890 & 1900

The nature of assaults reported in the Richmond Planet frequently included criminal assault, or sexual assault, as it is known today.  If the assault was committed by a black man, especially if against a white woman or girl, there was likely to be a lynching involved.  A significant number of reported assaults in the Richmond Planet involve men being lynched. 

Some of the assault reporting is simply that of violent assault- including drunken or domestic violence.  Over time, the number of lynchings associated with assault does not seem to decrease.  It remains a constant in extralegal justice.  This can be understood in the context of this being a Southern, black-owned paper.  Lynchings are significant injustices that disproportionately affected black communities, so their newspapers focused heavily on them.  This was also a crime happening mostly in the South, and this is a southern paper.