This research project involves determining how lynching in the adjoining states of Missouri and Illinois was covered by newspapers of local regional newspapers during the period of 1901 to 1942. The aim is to ascertain any changes that occurred over this time frame and to demonstrate the difference in causation between lynchings in the South as compared with lynchings above the lynch-belt. Press coverage between the differing regions will be used as well as secondary sources to examine ten lynchings within the southern areas of Missouri and Illinois. Evaluation of the headlines in addition to analysis of the textual body of these newspaper articles will be made to determine editorial intent, if possible as well as the use of secondary sources to provide contextual historical analysis of the time frame to these individual lynching events. This paper is currently being researched and is an important study in that lynching in the Border States is an under researched area. Both Illinois, a Free State and Missouri, a Slave State are above the “lynch belt” and the analysis of press accounts and the change over time in the reporting serves as an indicator of the type of discourse Americans were having about lynching and the type of information being provided to them by the press. Studying these ten cases in context within the Jim Crow, the Great Migration an World War II eras establishes that there were two appreciable different reasons for lynchings between the south and the Border States.