On April 3, candidate for Florida governor, James Fishback, told a Black man he should be lynched after bringing up alleged relations with a minor.

In the video, political YouTuber Tajytv confronted Fishback over past allegations involving a former relationship with a 17-year-old, Fishback denied any wrongdoing as no criminal charges were filed.

When things became more heated, Fishback shockingly called for the streamer to be lynched. Fishback tried to fallback by saying he would lynch every Epstein criminal in America, but the damage was already done.

Some people online are saying that Fishback’s choice of words are harmless, but this idea overlooks the historical meaning the term lynching carries for Black Americans.

Lynching was a widespread method of racial terror used primarily by white mobs against Black Americans from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s. These killings were not simply acts of violence; they were public events designed to instill fear, enforce racial hierarchy, and humiliate entire Black communities.

Victims were often tortured before death, with documented cases involving burning, mutilation, or prolonged public display. One of the most infamous lynchings in American history occurred in 1918 with the murder of Mary Turner.

Mary was just 21 years old and eight months pregnant when she was lynched for protesting the lynching of her husband the day before. In retaliation, a white mob abducted her, hung her upside down from a tree, covered her body in gasoline, and set her on fire. While she was still alive, members of the mob cut her unborn child from her abdomen, and stomped her infant to death. The mob then shot Mary hundreds of times, ending her life in an act of extreme racial terror.

Mary is only one of the hundreds of lynchings that occurred in the United States, and minimizing what that word meant and what it continues to mean for Black Americans is insensitive.

So far Fishback has not made a statement regarding this incident, but if someone like Fishback is seeking governmental leadership and cannot recognize the weight of a word like lynching, voters have to decide whether it was simply poor judgment, or a lack of understanding American history.