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In “The Southern Rite of Human Sacrifice,” Donald Mathews argues that lynching can be understood as a religious ritual, a symbolic act as pregnant with religious meaning as with political meaning. In this article, he states they he believes lynching was symbolic of power, however, I believe that this strive for power is inhumane. This practice of religion based power was something that was very prevalent back in the day and this was thought to be a proper punishment handed down by the law. It was not until anti-lynching movements came along that this practice was ultimately deemed unlawful and cruel. This practice did not however fully leave its ideologies behind this paved the way for many different ways of punishment that people thought was going to go unnoticed. A prime example of such things are murders committed by men and women of law or also known as police officers. This led a statistical analysis and study from the author of this article. Mathews explains that in this literature, especially Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck’s 1995 book A Festival of Violence, “the demographics, economics, seasons, and politics of lynching were patterned and correlated statistically to establish trends.” This study made us find out that lynching in the south was so prevalent that it seemed every southern city had a lynching tree and this practice was brought on by White Supremacy which paved the way for this unethical punishment.