Vigilance committee

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A vigilance committee is a group of private citizens who take it upon themselves to administer law and order or exercise power in places where they consider the governmental structures or actions inadequate.^[1] Prominent historical examples of vigilance committees engaged in forms of vigilantism include abolitionist committees who, beginning in the 1830s, worked to free enslaved people and aid fugitive slaves, in violation of the laws at the time.^[2] However, many other vigilance committees were explicitly grounded in racial prejudice and xenophobia, administering extrajudicial punishment to abolitionists or members of minority groups.