How common were black lynchings 50 years ago? After watching what seemed like an hour-long press conference on CNN--the most trusted name in news--where Paul Rodriguez (a co-owner of the Laugh Factory where Michael Richards performed) argued with a foaming-at-the-mouth black audience over the Richards flap, my principal reaction was "Michael Richards is Jewish? I didn't know that."

Later, I wondered if it were true, as Richards said, that fifty years ago a disrespectful black man would find himself "upside down with a fork up his ass." Precisely, how common was lynching in 1956? According to the Tuskegee Institute, the exact number of cases in 1956 was ZERO .