Final answer:
The term that refers to narratives created to justify lynching is Option A - 'mythical discourse,' which is a form of political propaganda used to support racially motivated violence and white supremacy.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term that refers to a narrative created to justify lynching is mythical discourse. These narratives often serve as a form of political propaganda, endorsing a specific viewpoint to substantiate acts of violence and enforced supremacy. Throughout history, lynching was a brutal reality often underpinned by such narratives, which claimed the necessity of such actions to preserve societal order or prevent crime, notably those involving African Americans post-Civil War and during the Jim Crow era of segregation and disenfranchisement.
Lynching narratives served as a tool to reinforce racial hierarchies by projecting fears of 'negro domination' or alleging widespread criminality among black people. This type of discourse relied heavily on creating and maintaining cultural myths that rationalize systemic violence and oppression—an approach also employed by organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, who used these narratives to instill fear and maintain white supremacy. While these assertions were commonly accepted in earlier periods, historians and scholars have since discredited them, demonstrating that lynchings were more about control and terror than actual justice or crime prevention.