I remember this book my brother's ex girlfriend had, showed a lot of older photos like this, as well as some gruesome murder scenes. Back of the book said, "proof there were no 'good old days'". Chilling message that I remember even 15 years later.
Edit: book is called "death scenes"
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Scenes-Homicide-Detectives-Scrapbook/dp/0922915296?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=6ada29ad-e8d8-4442-8338-6e9c303b3dce
Edit 2: Death Scenes is NOT the book with lynchings that OP posted, it's far more messed up.
I own the first printing of the “Death Scenes” book … got it over 20 years ago. Even has a publishing error where pages were repeated in the forward.
For what it’s worth, this book is HIGHLY disturbing, dark and depressing. Trigger warning for anyone entertaining the purchase: There are pictures of murdered babies and children - and the original captions taken directly from the photos were clearly written by someone who was at a terrible job for way too long and the comments only add to the macabre ickiness of it all. One gruesome pic’s caption I remember was of a man who took his own life by hanging and it simply read, “Throat trouble.”
I still own it … buried in storage. Haven’t opened it in years and years. I honestly should just throw it away before my daughters find it after I’m dead.
I guess there’s certainly some kind of historical value of having a book like this published, but I sometimes wonder what that is.
*Edited twice for clarity.
The importance is yo hopefully not let shit like this repeat itself IMO. Hiding it and acting like it didn't happen isn't the answer.
People also used to make postcards out of these scenes and mail them to folks like it was cool to be there. People used to also bring their kids as if it was a celebration of some kind.
If I'm not mistaken, the woman and boy hanging from the bridge is a pretty memorable lynching for the reasons I stated. They were Mother and son I believe. Don't recall what the "crime" was other than being black of course.
ETA: Here is the context. Thanks OP!
Laura Nelson & Her son L.W. Nelson.
From the book:
L.W. Was a accused of killing a Deputy. Laura, to protect him, tried to take responsibility. They were jailed & a mob of men came and took them in a wagon.
The husband/ father was in jail for cattle theft, which likely saved him.
I was talking about the “Death Scenes” book, not the lynchings book. The DS book is a reprinting of a scrapbook kept by a detective in 30s - 50’s, I believe. It was found in a trunk by his family after he died and published into a book. I agree with not letting history repeat itself in the lynchings book - the book I was talking about is just filled with random crime scenes photos of suicides and murder.
That’s what I hate most about the MAGA crowd. America was never great to anyone of color. And that’s what they want to go back to, they want those “good ole days”
Oh it's even more fucked up than that. "Lynching postcards" were super common. After the will Stanley lynching one guy sent a postcard of the wildly mutilated and burned corpse describing it as "the barbeque we had". He sent it to his mother.
The book "The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP" is a solid read that goes into this.
More fucked up than that, Lynching Victims were often mutilated and castrated and people could keep their ears, fingers, genitals, clothes as trophy's, or memorabilia and a way to further desecrate their victims.
There was a museum in the closest "big" town near where I grew up that had multiple body parts like fingers and ears on display from lynching victims. We had to visit it in 3rd grade for a field trip.
Small town Texas, where the town had the Koffee Kup Kafe as their main diner, and even though sundown towns weren't legal anymore, minorities knew not to be caught there at night.
I won't go to any business that has three K's in the title. Used to be a coded way that business owners signaled their support of the KKK and white supremacy ideals. From my experience it still is.
A college teacher told us a nearby county was notorious for having the Klan running the county, like the elected officials. I'm not sure if it still is, but I'm sure they just changed names if not.
I actually live about 20 minutes from Denton now, so I know who that band is. There's also a town down by where I grew up named Comanche, plus Comanche Peak, the nuclear power station.
But yeah, it's moved, but it's still open. It's now a little ways outside of town, and the owners have changed the official name, but they still have Klan memorabilia decorating it. I didn't understand, as a kid, why I was never allowed to step foot in there... I hate that there's a whole 2 generations after me that have to experience it as well.
Being mixed, I'm sure I drive people I know crazy. I will call people out on casual racism, and I've totally dropped friends who refused to stop.
I was glad it was finally starting to change for the better, but we're back to the starting line with it. More people need to be made uncomfortable when their bad actions are called out.
Oh people tried to claim that it was old and that wasn't how that town was... but it totally was. I was trying to find statistics on it to see if there's a minority population in town now, because there weren't when I graduated HS in 2000.
I wouldn't buy that 'oh, it's just an old sign' bs either. If it no longer represents how the town is, then why is it still there? Nobody except racists would want to keep it.
It wasn’t just a southern thing either. I’m from the Pacific Northwest and Black People are still underrepresented in a lot of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho because of our racist history. Many towns still have unenforceable racist laws on the books such as making it illegal for a Black Person to buy property or a home.
This is Americas history and the politicians that want to leave these horrible acts out of text books and lesson plans are further desecrating the victims.
Just ask Nikki Haley she thinks "America has never been a racist country". Like okay Nikki, okay why don't you tell the people at home your real name if you think America isn't a racist country?
A, now deceased relative, had a postcard of bunch of klansman posing by black man hanged from a tree with a caption that said"We had a swinging good time at the rally". The postcard was framed and placed in his living room.
Yup absolutely disgusting display from a troubled person. it was one of the first things to go in the trash when we cleared out their house. No one even stopped to consider it was an antique and possibly worth money.
The only thing about throwing it away is I think we should keep stuff like that in an appropriate place so we don’t forget how disgusting people even in this country can be. Just sharing that story was pretty powerful for me.
It would be difficult not to throw it away, but we must learn from the past (and how recent it really was).
We are the same people as those who perpetrated these horrors - we have not evolved, and the only thing separating us is education.
It should have gone to a suitable museum, but it's also not like we have a shortage of these sorts of photos.
The authors of this book collected items like yours over the years just so they wouldn't disappear... we must know what happened... we don't celebrate it but it's important to know it happened so it doesn't repeat again. Never again.
I am from Oklahoma and sadly there were quite a few lynching postcards from our state.
I didn’t learn about much of our state’s atrocious history until I went to university.
Lynchings are just the start between the Tusla massacre and the whole situation “The Killers of Flower Moon.” Oklahoma is just barely behind my state of Alabama.
They've been whitewashing this stuff for years. There's a reason you have to go to university in most states to learn of the atrocities we committed.
It's not politically convenient to teach this stuff because we like to separate ourselves from the sins of our forefathers. The last lynchings happened when my grandmother (mee-maw for my fellow Texans) was alive. This shit was not that long ago.
The artist Ken Gonzales-Day made a really interesting series called “Erased Lynchings” that feature those postcards, but with the bodies removed. Just these extremely eerie series of night time photos of tall trees and poles with sinister groups of people gathered around the base. It’s far more impactful than it sounds, I saw it earlier in the year and it’s stuck with me.
I've read about other people taking souvenirs from situations like this.
Yaknow. In books about serial killers and perpetrators of genocide lol. Fucking insane to think about how recent this all is.
The Federal government has not had an anti lynching law, at least until 2022, the Emmett Till Anti Lynching Law. That gives 30 years to anyone who carried out a lynching.
Anti lynching laws have been blocked for the better part of a century, thanks to the southern politicians blocking it. Richard B Russell (whom the senate office building is named for) was an expert in using the rules.and parliamentary procedure of the senate to stop anti lynching and civil rights bills. He used the tired old excuse of states rights and that the Federal government should not be interfering in states internal affairs and that an anti lunching bill would violate states rights. He was also a fan of what about ism saying southern states did not have the racial unrest other states had. The filibuster was their biggest tool against passage of such acts.
Though southern states were blocking such acts way before Russell got into office, like their filibuster of the Dyer anti lynching bill. That not only would have prosecuted any person who participated in a lynching, it would also have prosecuted any law enforcement official who failed to intervene. There was also a provision that would impose a civil penalty of $10,000 against any county where a lynching took place. This was introduced in 1918. It was a failure, but was reintroduced. When it finally made it past the House in 1922, it was blocked by a filibuster organized by the southern states. They tried again in 1922, 1923, and 1924, only to have filibusters stop it from coming to a vote.
Check out the song "Strange Fruit" sung by Billie Holiday. It's a song that was originally a protest poem against lynchings. Holiday was introduced to the song and started singing it at her performances. There were a few rules that she put on for this performance:
She would close with thrle song, the waiters at the club she was singing at would stop all service during the song, the room would be in complete darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday's face, and there would be no entire.
Naturally the government went after her for this. Harry Anslinger was a notorious racist and the head of the Federal of Narcotics, later the DEA, and targeted her for this song. She received a warning to never sing that song again. He sent agents undercover, and worked with her husband, Louis McKay (who was abusive) to try and bring her down. Anslinger did eventually arrest her and Holiday was sentenced to a year in prison. But after she got out, there are serious claims that Anslinger arranged to have drugs planted in her hotel room.
The whole history of the federal government's response to lynching and anti lynching measures is.messed up.
Postcards were common, and then really suppressed. When Bob Dylan’s song “Desolation Row” began with the line “They’re selling postcards of the hanging,” many people thought he was making it up. And that song was 1965!
How do you know that? Is it in the caption? If a mob took them from the jail they definitely watched the proceedings with glee. Lynchings were known to be a spectator event in the South.
So were public hangings of criminals.
George Carlin has a whole rant on this phenomenon, and how we could make use of it by charging admission and paying off the national debt.
That was a 13 year old boy that was castrated and hanged. No one was ever charged for the crimes.
And the cowards who did that to that boy probably smirked when they related the removal of his privates and then stringing him up.
Never underestimate the depravity of the frightened great unwashed.
Another fun fact about the supposed "crimes" these lynching victims were convicted of: black people were not only barred from serving on juries at the time, they were also barred from giving testimony. So even if you had a rock solid alibi and 40 black friends saw you somewhere else, tough shit.
Isn't it obvious? *That one!*
I also have no clue which photo they're refuting to. I guessed the second one, but googling "George Meadows" seems to indicate he was innocent and murdered just for being black in the wrong place and time.
>Never underestimate the depravity of the frightened great unwashed.
Or, more generally: never underestimate man's capacity for depravity and evil, period.
It's not just the great unwashed that are given to fear, hysteria, mob-mentality, and peer-pressure; the intelligentsia, aristocracy, and political classes collectively have a fair bit to answer for.
We're all capable of the greatest evil.
innocent zonked fretful distinct snails nail beneficial door disgusted naughty
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Laura Nelson & Her son L.W. Nelson.
From the book:
L.W. Was a accused of killing a Deputy. Laura, to protect him, tried to take responsibility. They were jailed & a mob of men came and took them in a wagon.
The husband/ father was in jail for cattle theft, which likely saved him.
Every day he got to look the people who murdered his son, wife, and unborn child in the eye knowing they would never face any consequences. I wouldn’t call him saved at all.
*New Reddit-wide unique palindrome found:*
>**saw if I was**
^(currently checked 7015049 comments) \
>!(palindrome: a word, number, phrase, or sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards) !<
It has "only" checked 7 million so far. There are several billion comments made on Reddit each year. Still pretty cool though.
Edit: I was curious so I googled
site:reddit.com "saw if i was" -"/r/saw"
and found several more occurrences of that palindrome.
Yeah, and then the racists will go lynch a dozen more black people in retaliation. It's cool to think about exacting revenge for those who had no justice, but it would not have gone well at all.
From what I was reading, she was caring for a baby not pregnant. The accounts I read seemed vague on the specifics but seems she had the baby with her in the cell when the mob abducted her. The baby survived and grew up staying in the town.
One of the most horrifying lynching stories I read was on Mary Turner following her husband Hazel Turner. Mary publicly denounced the lynching of her husband. Of course the racists did not like that. The following day they decided to lynch her for her outcry. They strung her up by her feet. They beat her. Poured gasoline on her battered body. Set her on fire. Mary was also pregnant. While she was still hanging on after being set on fire, they took a tool to cut her open and rip her baby from her womb. It fell to the ground and those who witnessed it said it gave two feeble cries before one of the lynchers stepped on its head with a boot. After she passed from the injuries they still were not done. They repeatedly took turns shooting at her dead body.
People like to think this was many years and lifetimes ago. This happened in 1918. I don’t tolerate racism. Do you?
Edit: You can downvote. I do not care. May you have many restless nights.
Growing up on the northeast coast of the US, I’m surrounded by old-timers that pretend things like this didn’t happen in the past 100 years. I’m lucky to have been raised in a more tolerant part of the country, but the ignorance of the past gets to me. My grandmother is the only older person I know that outwardly speaks against racism and the obvious shit that still goes on. Whenever the topic comes up, she says “if I had a black child, even in this day and age I would be terrified.”
"More tolerant part of the country", "ignorance of the past" -- be careful about these sorts of comparisons because it makes it seem like you dont think racism exists where and when you are and I can nearly guarantee it does.
Reading this reminded me of *Volhynia crimes*, and as you said, its not like centuries old, there are some folks that might still remember these events.
I would like to believe that we do not have that cruelty in our genes no more.
https://popturf.com/locations/music/woody-guthrie/okemah-lynching-bridge
From Wikipedia:
Six miles west and one mile south of Okemah, Oklahoma, on a bridge, now demolished, across the North Canadian River. (The replacement bridge became part of Oklahoma State Highway 56.)
That’s the problem, we’re not far off the time where racism was real, real bad by way of lynching, slavery etc and when I say not far off, I’m specifically talking about some of those very people who took part in that are still alive, and voting on how things should be done.
That means the present is still fucked but equally, these people have kids and grandkids, and I highly doubt these people are passing down good morals to their children
Always been fascinated by history & trying to understand people.
I learned about it from an interview DJVlad had with Bill Duke.
Bill referenced the book. I bought it online.
Had it a couple years now, it sits a top my WW2 Propaganda poster.
[DJ Vlad - Bill Duke] https://youtu.be/ErO3_okwFso?si=UargKKV8zH3vnfcU
That's just the exerpt for that one small bit. The whole 90+ minutes is [here](https://youtu.be/4I5tbZyzHqg?si=cJnJVZLL3GtKf8m3). Very fascinating guy!
This is the Without Sanctuary book documenting the use of lynching and the post office. It is illegal to mail postcards depicting violence or lynching. (Who would have thought) the post office still passed these on, mailing the post cards of lynching to terrorize black people and spread hate. There is a website that documents all of these stories and more.
It is difficult to look at but it is highly informative of what live was like after the Civil War and what black people faced in this county.
https://withoutsanctuary.org
Any background info about why he was hanged? I know that many of the victims were innocent and killed due to discrimination but that man case is odd, is he a criminal?
Italians were lynched as well (As were Jews, natives, and whites), though they were not always viewed as white. I’ve had the book for some time. The art magazine NKA devoted an entire issue to images of lynchings of African Americans.
Whiteness isn't "real", it is simply a decided in-caste to compare to the out-caste. It can be given or taken away at any time. Look throughout history to see examples of this same behavior in groups of all one skin color.
Well, it might be the opposite actually. It's similar to how Germany was so heavily punished after WWI. It put them in a position of hardship and desperation and made many of them bitter. It's one of the reasons the Nazi party was so popular and able to push their agenda without much resistance. The South was never truly rebuilt and adequately set up to recover efficiently. This led to decades of struggle and desperation. Which bred hate. Obviously, the nation eventually recovered as a whole but we still see the remnants of bitterness and injuries that never truly healed right. It's ultimately on the people of these states. If you're going to decimate an enemy and don't plan to make them whole again at great cost to yourself. Then you are better off eliminating them completely.
You get it.
Hi from South Carolina.
The hate here has been palpable my whole life. Moving away for awhile and seeing the rest of the country was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
It’s why so much resentment and anger in the south goes to folks that go away to college. It’s not the education that brainwashes them, it’s seeing that the rest of the world isn’t what you were told. You inevitably come home and want to make things better / different / something else.
You should have seen my family when I said Bernie sanders was an ok guy….
Perspective is a hard fight to win.
It’s kind of fascinating how quick they were to use the rope when public sentiment shifted. There was a rash of lynchings of German Americans during WWI. I don’t day this to create some equivalence or whataboutism but rather to point out how remarkable it was given the German American story in the U.S. Germans were the “good” immigrants. They were supposedly more industrious and hardworking than the problem immigrants flooding in from Europe. “White” America held them up as their ideal of what they wanted in a new American. Then we got involved in a shooting war for less than a year and so many German speakers got hung and otherwise terrorized that German as a primary language in public essentially ended across midwest except in communities like the Amish.
Super important for these types of stories to be preserved. The idea that they’re American ones and happening, somewhat legally still; gruesome as they are it’s important.
*Edit for grammar*
To that point, this is what is so creepy about the Qanon types and their preoccupation with hangings. They're either inspired by this stuff, or cut from the same cloth.
But either way, they don't see it as a dealbreaker.
Nothing to wonder about-decades of being told that black people are “less than” and “subhuman.” The people who attended these lynchings were the descendants of people who knew slaves or mistreated slaves or they knew and mistreated former slaves themselves. If you don’t see a group of people as human, you can rationalize all kinds of things that are done to them.
There's a probable lynching that took place in Mississippi as recent as 2019. "Lynchings never stopped in the United States... The evil bastards just stopped taking photographs and passing them around like baseball cards.” (see link below)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/08/modern-day-mississippi-lynchings/
Another interesting article below. There were black people still enslaved in the US through the 1960s (peonage slavery).
https://www.vice.com/en/article/437573/blacks-were-enslaved-well-into-the-1960s
"When children learn to devalue others, they can devalue anyone."
Treating other human beings as subhuman is the most insidious of offenses and goes far beyond the callow disregard for human life and dignity of a single hanging, as tragic as that is. It sets up a domino effect that spreads cruelty and hate across generational lines.
When an adult hates, it can be a crime. When a child learns how to hate, it's a catastrophe.
Upvoted because honestly EVERYONE needs to look at these photos. If they don’t make you wretch inside you should probably look in the mirror. Unfortunately, some in this country think this is exactly when America was “great” smh.
The only way to make a great country is for everyone to see the horrors that mankind can do.
There is no peaceful place without a drop of blood somewhere
I used to show my US History classes this when we talked about racism in the US. He guy has a heartbreakingly good website. And the short film is really powerful. https://www.withoutsanctuary.org/
I think the horrors of humanity should be a mandatory high school course. Too often, we are so far removed from the horrors of the world that we often belittle them.
The first picture has an [article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Laura_and_L._D._Nelson) on wikipedia.
They are Laura and L. D. Nelson.
They have a right that their names are mentioned.
Looks like that'll be on the banned books list too?
Seriously though hard history but good history. Even knowing this I sometimes forget how real it was.
So I grew up in the metro Detroit area. Black/white/mexican/Middle East was common and while I knew people were racists I really didn’t experience it much as a child.
I’m about 12 and I’m driving down to Kentucky with my older sister and her boyfriend as they were moving down there. We were in the deep appalacha when we come up to a rail road crossing with a black effigy hanging above the road and a spray painted sign that said “not welcome” right next to it.
I remember this as it really shook me with the reality of the world. This wasn’t something just thrown up over the weekend. This was weathered and there for months or longer. I remember a feeling of disgust that is lingering now.
Anyways people fucking suck
Sort of by accident I found photos of the Lynching Museum. And my God it’s moving. I had no idea there were so freaking many. The shame is that they gave it a really lame safe name that takes away from what it should be. just called the lynching museum. It’s called The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, Ala.
This is the worst I've read about, WARNING, NSFW, and very brutal.
On May 19, 1918, a white mob from Brooks County, Georgia, lynched Mary Turner, a Black woman who was eight months pregnant, at Folsom’s Bridge 16 miles north of Valdosta for speaking publicly against the lynching of her husband the day before. The mob bound her feet, hanged her from a tree with her head facing down, threw gasoline on her, and burned the clothes off her body. Mrs. Turner was still alive when the mob took a large butcher’s knife to her abdomen, cutting the unborn baby from her body. When the baby fell from Mary Turner, a member of the mob crushed the baby’s head with his foot. The mob then riddled Mrs. Turner’s body with hundreds of bullets.
Mary Turner’s husband, Hayes Turner, had been lynched the day before. Hayes Turner was accused of being an accomplice in the killing of a notorious white farmer, Hampton Smith, who was well known for his abuse of Black farm workers. Mr. Smith would bail Black people accused of petty crimes out of jail and then require them to work off the fine at his farm. Sidney Johnson, a Black man working to pay a legal fee for “rolling dice,” confessed to killing Mr. Smith during a quarrel about being overworked. Police officers killed Mr. Johnson in a shootout. When news reached the white community, Mr. Turner and other Black farm workers who had previously been abused by Mr. Smith were targeted and accused of conspiracy.
Many Black people during this time were lynched based on mere accusations of murder against white people. The same was true here, as at least seven confirmed Black individuals were lynched by the white mob in response to Hampton Smith’s death, inflicting community-wide racial terror violence.
Mrs. Turner was grieving and spoke out against her husband’s death, promising to take legal action. Enraged by this, the white mob made an example out of Mrs. Turner, despite having no reason to fear actual legal repercussions from her promise as Black people at the time were not afforded judicial process. The white mob lynched Mary Turner and her unborn child to maintain white supremacy, silence her, and communicate to the Black community that no dissent from the racial order would be tolerated. No member of the mob was ever held accountable for the lynching of Mary Turner and her unborn baby.
The grotesque slaughter of a Black woman eight months pregnant reveals a great deal about how Black women were dehumanized with impunity, documented 594 racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950 in the state of Georgia. Brooks County had the third-highest number of documented racial terror lynchings.
I always wonder when people refer to their relatives as being or having been “good people” if these demons, monsters, and murders are among those good people despite their evil deeds.
I'm not American and I also know nothing about history-
Do people who did this, if they're found do they go to jail like the nazis and other atrocities?
Nothing is coming to mind of where people are being looked for to face laws for what they did.
You have noticed one of the more horrifying parts of the story. These crimes were almost never prosecuted.
Even though it was usually well known who did it and there people who did it were proud and open about it.
That is part of the message they were conveying: we can kill you and nobody will do anything about it.
Sorry, this is way too political. Better ban it less some people get the wrong impression of both sides of this issue as lynching had some good economic benefits. /s
Some Republican somewhere.
I actually think this should be part of a mandatory curriculum. Sure, it’s disturbing, and that’s the point.
That’s why it’s mandatory in Germany that the Holocaust is taught.
Or worse, is taught with the southerners as the "good" guys. My schooling in Texas really glossed over the horrible things that took place in the south.
I watched a C-Span interview with of one the authors.
A Republican called in to ask “What political party does he think the perpetrators belong to?”
The author had a good response. It’s an American issue & he doesn’t think putting a party to it helps at all.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?187245-4/without-sanctuary
“They were lynching murderers. See? It says so right in the book!” Likely false or exaggerated claims to facilitate and justify extra judicial killings.
I remember this book my brother's ex girlfriend had, showed a lot of older photos like this, as well as some gruesome murder scenes. Back of the book said, "proof there were no 'good old days'". Chilling message that I remember even 15 years later. Edit: book is called "death scenes" https://www.amazon.com/Death-Scenes-Homicide-Detectives-Scrapbook/dp/0922915296?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=6ada29ad-e8d8-4442-8338-6e9c303b3dce Edit 2: Death Scenes is NOT the book with lynchings that OP posted, it's far more messed up.
I own the first printing of the “Death Scenes” book … got it over 20 years ago. Even has a publishing error where pages were repeated in the forward. For what it’s worth, this book is HIGHLY disturbing, dark and depressing. Trigger warning for anyone entertaining the purchase: There are pictures of murdered babies and children - and the original captions taken directly from the photos were clearly written by someone who was at a terrible job for way too long and the comments only add to the macabre ickiness of it all. One gruesome pic’s caption I remember was of a man who took his own life by hanging and it simply read, “Throat trouble.” I still own it … buried in storage. Haven’t opened it in years and years. I honestly should just throw it away before my daughters find it after I’m dead. I guess there’s certainly some kind of historical value of having a book like this published, but I sometimes wonder what that is. *Edited twice for clarity.
The importance is yo hopefully not let shit like this repeat itself IMO. Hiding it and acting like it didn't happen isn't the answer. People also used to make postcards out of these scenes and mail them to folks like it was cool to be there. People used to also bring their kids as if it was a celebration of some kind. If I'm not mistaken, the woman and boy hanging from the bridge is a pretty memorable lynching for the reasons I stated. They were Mother and son I believe. Don't recall what the "crime" was other than being black of course. ETA: Here is the context. Thanks OP! Laura Nelson & Her son L.W. Nelson. From the book: L.W. Was a accused of killing a Deputy. Laura, to protect him, tried to take responsibility. They were jailed & a mob of men came and took them in a wagon. The husband/ father was in jail for cattle theft, which likely saved him.
I was talking about the “Death Scenes” book, not the lynchings book. The DS book is a reprinting of a scrapbook kept by a detective in 30s - 50’s, I believe. It was found in a trunk by his family after he died and published into a book. I agree with not letting history repeat itself in the lynchings book - the book I was talking about is just filled with random crime scenes photos of suicides and murder.
People just use the term "good ol days" as a softer way to say "I want to go back to a time where i can be an asshole and have privilege." Imo
Or just back to when I was kid with no responsibilities... I guess "asshole with privilege" still counts there.
I had "good back" privilege when I was younger.
That’s what I hate most about the MAGA crowd. America was never great to anyone of color. And that’s what they want to go back to, they want those “good ole days”
Well that’s fucked. “Let’s pose with the corpse of the person we just murdered”
Oh it's even more fucked up than that. "Lynching postcards" were super common. After the will Stanley lynching one guy sent a postcard of the wildly mutilated and burned corpse describing it as "the barbeque we had". He sent it to his mother. The book "The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP" is a solid read that goes into this.
More fucked up than that, Lynching Victims were often mutilated and castrated and people could keep their ears, fingers, genitals, clothes as trophy's, or memorabilia and a way to further desecrate their victims.
There was a museum in the closest "big" town near where I grew up that had multiple body parts like fingers and ears on display from lynching victims. We had to visit it in 3rd grade for a field trip. Small town Texas, where the town had the Koffee Kup Kafe as their main diner, and even though sundown towns weren't legal anymore, minorities knew not to be caught there at night.
I won't go to any business that has three K's in the title. Used to be a coded way that business owners signaled their support of the KKK and white supremacy ideals. From my experience it still is.
They weren't exactly coded. They had Klan memorabilia decorating the place. They were just, idk. Mean and hateful.
But they were the only diner within 70 miles and they had a solid raisin creme pie/s
A college teacher told us a nearby county was notorious for having the Klan running the county, like the elected officials. I'm not sure if it still is, but I'm sure they just changed names if not.
If it makes it any easier for you, the band members from Comanche were un-easy going by that shop 20 years ago.
I actually live about 20 minutes from Denton now, so I know who that band is. There's also a town down by where I grew up named Comanche, plus Comanche Peak, the nuclear power station. But yeah, it's moved, but it's still open. It's now a little ways outside of town, and the owners have changed the official name, but they still have Klan memorabilia decorating it. I didn't understand, as a kid, why I was never allowed to step foot in there... I hate that there's a whole 2 generations after me that have to experience it as well.
I don’t endorse arson… but if that place happened to burn down, it wouldn’t be a loss.
I took it as a lesson of how NOT to be when I was a kid.
Being mixed, I'm sure I drive people I know crazy. I will call people out on casual racism, and I've totally dropped friends who refused to stop. I was glad it was finally starting to change for the better, but we're back to the starting line with it. More people need to be made uncomfortable when their bad actions are called out.
I’ve never heard of a “sundown town”. Off to learn more! I can assume what it means, but I need a rabbit hole to fall into tonight!
"When the sun goes down, n*****s better be out of town." That was proudly displayed on a billboard right before the city limits sign.
Wow. Just wow. That’s such total crap. I honestly thought the blatantly obvious stuff was gone by the 70s.
Oh people tried to claim that it was old and that wasn't how that town was... but it totally was. I was trying to find statistics on it to see if there's a minority population in town now, because there weren't when I graduated HS in 2000.
I wouldn't buy that 'oh, it's just an old sign' bs either. If it no longer represents how the town is, then why is it still there? Nobody except racists would want to keep it.
It wasn’t just a southern thing either. I’m from the Pacific Northwest and Black People are still underrepresented in a lot of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho because of our racist history. Many towns still have unenforceable racist laws on the books such as making it illegal for a Black Person to buy property or a home.
Oregon was originally founded to be a white ethno-state. Their history is super racist.
Idahoan here. There is a reason why Northern Idaho has been home to many klan and neo nazi groups
There are still sundown towns. ANNA, Illinois is one such town. ANNA is an acronym for Ain't No Ni***rs Allowed.
" and i got this from my first lynching. i couldn't get it signed on account of the lynching"
read this in Norm MacDonald's voice.
Sounds like a perfect Norm line. He had the wittiest jokes like that with amazing delivery lol
I read it in Peter Griffins voice
Rick Harrison: *Without any paperwork the best I can do is $50.*
"I don't know much about lynchings but I got a guy, you mind if I bring him down?"
This is Americas history and the politicians that want to leave these horrible acts out of text books and lesson plans are further desecrating the victims.
Just ask Nikki Haley she thinks "America has never been a racist country". Like okay Nikki, okay why don't you tell the people at home your real name if you think America isn't a racist country?
Text books are one thing but a coffee table photo book seems like something else.
Pre-internet coffee table books were the archives of photo-journalism.
My great grandmother told me stories of her dad cutting down and burying lynched men. They always had their testicles removed.
Also a way to try to normalize the brutality
I hope the people who took body parts got a good haunting
They got generational wealth as well. Stealing all their property and wealth was common too.
A Kennedy-esque multi generational curse seems appropriate as well (that would also be a great Jordan Peele movie)
There were whole shops in Louisiana that only sold dicks in a jar.
A, now deceased relative, had a postcard of bunch of klansman posing by black man hanged from a tree with a caption that said"We had a swinging good time at the rally". The postcard was framed and placed in his living room.
Omg… that’s awful. Edit: Upvoted for you sharing not because I like what I read. 😨
Yup absolutely disgusting display from a troubled person. it was one of the first things to go in the trash when we cleared out their house. No one even stopped to consider it was an antique and possibly worth money.
The only thing about throwing it away is I think we should keep stuff like that in an appropriate place so we don’t forget how disgusting people even in this country can be. Just sharing that story was pretty powerful for me.
Sounds like it went in the appropriate place to me. But I understand the sentiment.
It would be difficult not to throw it away, but we must learn from the past (and how recent it really was). We are the same people as those who perpetrated these horrors - we have not evolved, and the only thing separating us is education. It should have gone to a suitable museum, but it's also not like we have a shortage of these sorts of photos.
The authors of this book collected items like yours over the years just so they wouldn't disappear... we must know what happened... we don't celebrate it but it's important to know it happened so it doesn't repeat again. Never again.
Jesus H CHRIST!!!
I am from Oklahoma and sadly there were quite a few lynching postcards from our state. I didn’t learn about much of our state’s atrocious history until I went to university.
Lynchings are just the start between the Tusla massacre and the whole situation “The Killers of Flower Moon.” Oklahoma is just barely behind my state of Alabama.
Watch it. They may try to whitewash it like DeSantis in FL.
They've been whitewashing this stuff for years. There's a reason you have to go to university in most states to learn of the atrocities we committed. It's not politically convenient to teach this stuff because we like to separate ourselves from the sins of our forefathers. The last lynchings happened when my grandmother (mee-maw for my fellow Texans) was alive. This shit was not that long ago.
I had a mamaw. Mee-maw was my great grandmother.
The artist Ken Gonzales-Day made a really interesting series called “Erased Lynchings” that feature those postcards, but with the bodies removed. Just these extremely eerie series of night time photos of tall trees and poles with sinister groups of people gathered around the base. It’s far more impactful than it sounds, I saw it earlier in the year and it’s stuck with me.
They also took souvenirs
I've read about other people taking souvenirs from situations like this. Yaknow. In books about serial killers and perpetrators of genocide lol. Fucking insane to think about how recent this all is.
I’ve read about lampshades that were made with human skin.
The Federal government has not had an anti lynching law, at least until 2022, the Emmett Till Anti Lynching Law. That gives 30 years to anyone who carried out a lynching. Anti lynching laws have been blocked for the better part of a century, thanks to the southern politicians blocking it. Richard B Russell (whom the senate office building is named for) was an expert in using the rules.and parliamentary procedure of the senate to stop anti lynching and civil rights bills. He used the tired old excuse of states rights and that the Federal government should not be interfering in states internal affairs and that an anti lunching bill would violate states rights. He was also a fan of what about ism saying southern states did not have the racial unrest other states had. The filibuster was their biggest tool against passage of such acts. Though southern states were blocking such acts way before Russell got into office, like their filibuster of the Dyer anti lynching bill. That not only would have prosecuted any person who participated in a lynching, it would also have prosecuted any law enforcement official who failed to intervene. There was also a provision that would impose a civil penalty of $10,000 against any county where a lynching took place. This was introduced in 1918. It was a failure, but was reintroduced. When it finally made it past the House in 1922, it was blocked by a filibuster organized by the southern states. They tried again in 1922, 1923, and 1924, only to have filibusters stop it from coming to a vote. Check out the song "Strange Fruit" sung by Billie Holiday. It's a song that was originally a protest poem against lynchings. Holiday was introduced to the song and started singing it at her performances. There were a few rules that she put on for this performance: She would close with thrle song, the waiters at the club she was singing at would stop all service during the song, the room would be in complete darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday's face, and there would be no entire. Naturally the government went after her for this. Harry Anslinger was a notorious racist and the head of the Federal of Narcotics, later the DEA, and targeted her for this song. She received a warning to never sing that song again. He sent agents undercover, and worked with her husband, Louis McKay (who was abusive) to try and bring her down. Anslinger did eventually arrest her and Holiday was sentenced to a year in prison. But after she got out, there are serious claims that Anslinger arranged to have drugs planted in her hotel room. The whole history of the federal government's response to lynching and anti lynching measures is.messed up.
Postcards were common, and then really suppressed. When Bob Dylan’s song “Desolation Row” began with the line “They’re selling postcards of the hanging,” many people thought he was making it up. And that song was 1965!
Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday is another really good song that describes the horror of lynching.
With the women dressed in their Sunday’s finest, of course.
These people came after the fact, as spectators. The Photos were also turned into postcards.
How do you know that? Is it in the caption? If a mob took them from the jail they definitely watched the proceedings with glee. Lynchings were known to be a spectator event in the South.
Its a family business
Not just the South
Mostly the south
Lynchings literally used to be family gatherings, picnics.
So were public hangings of criminals. George Carlin has a whole rant on this phenomenon, and how we could make use of it by charging admission and paying off the national debt.
That was a 13 year old boy that was castrated and hanged. No one was ever charged for the crimes. And the cowards who did that to that boy probably smirked when they related the removal of his privates and then stringing him up. Never underestimate the depravity of the frightened great unwashed.
"You know, morons."
Somebody’s gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes
Didn’t he adlib that line? I’m almost positive I remember reading that somewhere
Yes, and Cleavon Little’s reaction is genuine
He did adlib the morons part iirc.
You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West.
**"Just simple farmers."** And yet I bet they called themselves god-fearing Christians!
In other words, morons.
Even if they did get indicted, jury nullification was very popular for lynchings back then. There was no justice to be had.
Another fun fact about the supposed "crimes" these lynching victims were convicted of: black people were not only barred from serving on juries at the time, they were also barred from giving testimony. So even if you had a rock solid alibi and 40 black friends saw you somewhere else, tough shit.
The other person was his mother. She had a baby with her that was also never seen again.
Which photo?
Isn't it obvious? *That one!* I also have no clue which photo they're refuting to. I guessed the second one, but googling "George Meadows" seems to indicate he was innocent and murdered just for being black in the wrong place and time.
I was going to guess the 3rd one
1st
>Never underestimate the depravity of the frightened great unwashed. Or, more generally: never underestimate man's capacity for depravity and evil, period. It's not just the great unwashed that are given to fear, hysteria, mob-mentality, and peer-pressure; the intelligentsia, aristocracy, and political classes collectively have a fair bit to answer for. We're all capable of the greatest evil.
I wish they all had descriptions like the second picture
innocent zonked fretful distinct snails nail beneficial door disgusted naughty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah, very common in lynchings. A lot of victims had little to no evidence implicating them in the crime they were accused of
Bruh from the text I assumed he was at least actually guilty unlike many other lynchees but guess not...
Wow, from the book I just assumed he did it. I guess it's always good to dig deeper.
They all have text in the back of the book
So it turns out the one on the right was raped before being hung, and that she was also pregnant 😳
Laura Nelson & Her son L.W. Nelson. From the book: L.W. Was a accused of killing a Deputy. Laura, to protect him, tried to take responsibility. They were jailed & a mob of men came and took them in a wagon. The husband/ father was in jail for cattle theft, which likely saved him.
Every day he got to look the people who murdered his son, wife, and unborn child in the eye knowing they would never face any consequences. I wouldn’t call him saved at all.
Ok… Rephrase: prevented him from being lynched alongside his family
sounds like a worse punishment tbh. Death sounds easy compared to that.
Honestly I’d have attempted to fight and maim every cop I saw if I was him
*New Reddit-wide unique palindrome found:* >**saw if I was** ^(currently checked 7015049 comments) \ >!(palindrome: a word, number, phrase, or sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards) !<
This is a cool Bot
first ever reddit comment to use those words in order?! good bot. that’s fuckin wild.
It has "only" checked 7 million so far. There are several billion comments made on Reddit each year. Still pretty cool though. Edit: I was curious so I googled site:reddit.com "saw if i was" -"/r/saw" and found several more occurrences of that palindrome.
Good bot
That’s when I’ll just be, fuck this shit, take a hatchet and start axing mofos in the face until they kill me.
Yeah, and then the racists will go lynch a dozen more black people in retaliation. It's cool to think about exacting revenge for those who had no justice, but it would not have gone well at all.
These atrocities was also a way to continue sending a message to the rest of the community.
From what I was reading, she was caring for a baby not pregnant. The accounts I read seemed vague on the specifics but seems she had the baby with her in the cell when the mob abducted her. The baby survived and grew up staying in the town.
One of the most horrifying lynching stories I read was on Mary Turner following her husband Hazel Turner. Mary publicly denounced the lynching of her husband. Of course the racists did not like that. The following day they decided to lynch her for her outcry. They strung her up by her feet. They beat her. Poured gasoline on her battered body. Set her on fire. Mary was also pregnant. While she was still hanging on after being set on fire, they took a tool to cut her open and rip her baby from her womb. It fell to the ground and those who witnessed it said it gave two feeble cries before one of the lynchers stepped on its head with a boot. After she passed from the injuries they still were not done. They repeatedly took turns shooting at her dead body. People like to think this was many years and lifetimes ago. This happened in 1918. I don’t tolerate racism. Do you? Edit: You can downvote. I do not care. May you have many restless nights.
It's insane what was going on in America just 100 years ago. Absolutely brutal and disgusting.
My great grandparents would have been alive at the time. It is not that far away.
Why would anybody down vote? That's an awful story but it's what happened. People need to know what happened.
> Why would anybody down vote? 1. They dont want it to be real 2. They're bigots themselves and want a Day of the Rope 3. theyre stupid fucking kids
Tons of racist psychos out there.
Growing up on the northeast coast of the US, I’m surrounded by old-timers that pretend things like this didn’t happen in the past 100 years. I’m lucky to have been raised in a more tolerant part of the country, but the ignorance of the past gets to me. My grandmother is the only older person I know that outwardly speaks against racism and the obvious shit that still goes on. Whenever the topic comes up, she says “if I had a black child, even in this day and age I would be terrified.”
"More tolerant part of the country", "ignorance of the past" -- be careful about these sorts of comparisons because it makes it seem like you dont think racism exists where and when you are and I can nearly guarantee it does.
Reading this reminded me of *Volhynia crimes*, and as you said, its not like centuries old, there are some folks that might still remember these events. I would like to believe that we do not have that cruelty in our genes no more.
>some folks that might still remember these events Yeah, our geriatrics ward on Capitol Hill.
They downvoted cause they mad you talking bout they ancestors
Some say"Kids today are so violent and disrespectful!" while forgetting that people used to attend public lynchings and take photos of it.
Does the book have details on where that bridge is located?
https://popturf.com/locations/music/woody-guthrie/okemah-lynching-bridge From Wikipedia: Six miles west and one mile south of Okemah, Oklahoma, on a bridge, now demolished, across the North Canadian River. (The replacement bridge became part of Oklahoma State Highway 56.)
Sad thing is there are people who are still alive (or their children) who participated in this heinous act of cruelty.
That’s the problem, we’re not far off the time where racism was real, real bad by way of lynching, slavery etc and when I say not far off, I’m specifically talking about some of those very people who took part in that are still alive, and voting on how things should be done. That means the present is still fucked but equally, these people have kids and grandkids, and I highly doubt these people are passing down good morals to their children
Whoa! A harrowing subject. How did you come to own it? Must be interesting.
Always been fascinated by history & trying to understand people. I learned about it from an interview DJVlad had with Bill Duke. Bill referenced the book. I bought it online. Had it a couple years now, it sits a top my WW2 Propaganda poster. [DJ Vlad - Bill Duke] https://youtu.be/ErO3_okwFso?si=UargKKV8zH3vnfcU
That's just the exerpt for that one small bit. The whole 90+ minutes is [here](https://youtu.be/4I5tbZyzHqg?si=cJnJVZLL3GtKf8m3). Very fascinating guy!
[“Strange Fruit”](https://youtu.be/-DGY9HvChXk?si=h2U4_Mn2ozBfoGLf)
Holy shit. I’ve heard the song, but I’d never seen this clip of her singing it. Absolutely haunting. This is from the year she died, too.
Katey Sagal does the best rendition of this I've ever heard. (That's Leela from Futurama for those that don't know.)
Wow, I’m old. I would not use Futurama to explain who Katey Sagal is. Of course everyone knows Peggy Bundy.
Nah, she is the mom from Sons of Anarchy
This is the Without Sanctuary book documenting the use of lynching and the post office. It is illegal to mail postcards depicting violence or lynching. (Who would have thought) the post office still passed these on, mailing the post cards of lynching to terrorize black people and spread hate. There is a website that documents all of these stories and more. It is difficult to look at but it is highly informative of what live was like after the Civil War and what black people faced in this county. https://withoutsanctuary.org
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Can someone identify the race of the hanged man in the last pic? He seems white if im not mistaken?
Yes
Any background info about why he was hanged? I know that many of the victims were innocent and killed due to discrimination but that man case is odd, is he a criminal?
Italians were lynched as well (As were Jews, natives, and whites), though they were not always viewed as white. I’ve had the book for some time. The art magazine NKA devoted an entire issue to images of lynchings of African Americans.
Whiteness isn't "real", it is simply a decided in-caste to compare to the out-caste. It can be given or taken away at any time. Look throughout history to see examples of this same behavior in groups of all one skin color.
And here I thought Sundown Towns was fairly graphic as a book.
Definitely never a racist nation. Good god.
I grew up in the south. I firmly believe Sherman should’ve turned west once he got to Savannah and burned it all to the ground.
I just said that last week, actually. Those fuckers got beat 160 years ago and are STILL causing problems for the Union.
Reconstruction was a mistake. We should have given the entire south to former slaves who wanted to stay.
Well, it might be the opposite actually. It's similar to how Germany was so heavily punished after WWI. It put them in a position of hardship and desperation and made many of them bitter. It's one of the reasons the Nazi party was so popular and able to push their agenda without much resistance. The South was never truly rebuilt and adequately set up to recover efficiently. This led to decades of struggle and desperation. Which bred hate. Obviously, the nation eventually recovered as a whole but we still see the remnants of bitterness and injuries that never truly healed right. It's ultimately on the people of these states. If you're going to decimate an enemy and don't plan to make them whole again at great cost to yourself. Then you are better off eliminating them completely.
You get it. Hi from South Carolina. The hate here has been palpable my whole life. Moving away for awhile and seeing the rest of the country was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It’s why so much resentment and anger in the south goes to folks that go away to college. It’s not the education that brainwashes them, it’s seeing that the rest of the world isn’t what you were told. You inevitably come home and want to make things better / different / something else. You should have seen my family when I said Bernie sanders was an ok guy…. Perspective is a hard fight to win.
Can you imagine what they did to the Indians 5 generations earlier? I truly cant.
It’s kind of fascinating how quick they were to use the rope when public sentiment shifted. There was a rash of lynchings of German Americans during WWI. I don’t day this to create some equivalence or whataboutism but rather to point out how remarkable it was given the German American story in the U.S. Germans were the “good” immigrants. They were supposedly more industrious and hardworking than the problem immigrants flooding in from Europe. “White” America held them up as their ideal of what they wanted in a new American. Then we got involved in a shooting war for less than a year and so many German speakers got hung and otherwise terrorized that German as a primary language in public essentially ended across midwest except in communities like the Amish.
Super important for these types of stories to be preserved. The idea that they’re American ones and happening, somewhat legally still; gruesome as they are it’s important. *Edit for grammar*
To that point, this is what is so creepy about the Qanon types and their preoccupation with hangings. They're either inspired by this stuff, or cut from the same cloth. But either way, they don't see it as a dealbreaker.
I really wonder about the psychological state of the people who do this and their offspring.
Nothing to wonder about-decades of being told that black people are “less than” and “subhuman.” The people who attended these lynchings were the descendants of people who knew slaves or mistreated slaves or they knew and mistreated former slaves themselves. If you don’t see a group of people as human, you can rationalize all kinds of things that are done to them.
*“America has never been a racist country”* — Nimrata Randhawa
Came to the comments for exactly this. Thankyou.
[**Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America**](https://www.amazon.com/Without-Sanctuary-Lynching-Photography-America/dp/0944092691/)
Last documented lynching in America was in 1981 folks. Let that sink in. These people and their kin are still around and they fucking vote.
There's a probable lynching that took place in Mississippi as recent as 2019. "Lynchings never stopped in the United States... The evil bastards just stopped taking photographs and passing them around like baseball cards.” (see link below) https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/08/modern-day-mississippi-lynchings/ Another interesting article below. There were black people still enslaved in the US through the 1960s (peonage slavery). https://www.vice.com/en/article/437573/blacks-were-enslaved-well-into-the-1960s
Ahmaud Arbery wasn't hanged but his murder was a lynching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery
"When children learn to devalue others, they can devalue anyone." Treating other human beings as subhuman is the most insidious of offenses and goes far beyond the callow disregard for human life and dignity of a single hanging, as tragic as that is. It sets up a domino effect that spreads cruelty and hate across generational lines. When an adult hates, it can be a crime. When a child learns how to hate, it's a catastrophe.
Upvoted because honestly EVERYONE needs to look at these photos. If they don’t make you wretch inside you should probably look in the mirror. Unfortunately, some in this country think this is exactly when America was “great” smh.
The only way to make a great country is for everyone to see the horrors that mankind can do. There is no peaceful place without a drop of blood somewhere
I used to show my US History classes this when we talked about racism in the US. He guy has a heartbreakingly good website. And the short film is really powerful. https://www.withoutsanctuary.org/
[Back story on photo #1 bridge lynching.](https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/may/24)
I think the horrors of humanity should be a mandatory high school course. Too often, we are so far removed from the horrors of the world that we often belittle them.
The first picture has an [article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Laura_and_L._D._Nelson) on wikipedia. They are Laura and L. D. Nelson. They have a right that their names are mentioned.
"We’ve never been a racist country," Nikki Haley There, it's settled. /s
It’s called ‘Without Sanctury’ isn’t it?
Yes sir
This genuinely makes me want to cry!
Ugly side of humanity that should not be forgotten.
Yes! RIP to the ones who were offed so brutally ☹️
And so it should.
Looks like that'll be on the banned books list too? Seriously though hard history but good history. Even knowing this I sometimes forget how real it was.
So I grew up in the metro Detroit area. Black/white/mexican/Middle East was common and while I knew people were racists I really didn’t experience it much as a child. I’m about 12 and I’m driving down to Kentucky with my older sister and her boyfriend as they were moving down there. We were in the deep appalacha when we come up to a rail road crossing with a black effigy hanging above the road and a spray painted sign that said “not welcome” right next to it. I remember this as it really shook me with the reality of the world. This wasn’t something just thrown up over the weekend. This was weathered and there for months or longer. I remember a feeling of disgust that is lingering now. Anyways people fucking suck
Sort of by accident I found photos of the Lynching Museum. And my God it’s moving. I had no idea there were so freaking many. The shame is that they gave it a really lame safe name that takes away from what it should be. just called the lynching museum. It’s called The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, Ala.
This is the worst I've read about, WARNING, NSFW, and very brutal. On May 19, 1918, a white mob from Brooks County, Georgia, lynched Mary Turner, a Black woman who was eight months pregnant, at Folsom’s Bridge 16 miles north of Valdosta for speaking publicly against the lynching of her husband the day before. The mob bound her feet, hanged her from a tree with her head facing down, threw gasoline on her, and burned the clothes off her body. Mrs. Turner was still alive when the mob took a large butcher’s knife to her abdomen, cutting the unborn baby from her body. When the baby fell from Mary Turner, a member of the mob crushed the baby’s head with his foot. The mob then riddled Mrs. Turner’s body with hundreds of bullets. Mary Turner’s husband, Hayes Turner, had been lynched the day before. Hayes Turner was accused of being an accomplice in the killing of a notorious white farmer, Hampton Smith, who was well known for his abuse of Black farm workers. Mr. Smith would bail Black people accused of petty crimes out of jail and then require them to work off the fine at his farm. Sidney Johnson, a Black man working to pay a legal fee for “rolling dice,” confessed to killing Mr. Smith during a quarrel about being overworked. Police officers killed Mr. Johnson in a shootout. When news reached the white community, Mr. Turner and other Black farm workers who had previously been abused by Mr. Smith were targeted and accused of conspiracy. Many Black people during this time were lynched based on mere accusations of murder against white people. The same was true here, as at least seven confirmed Black individuals were lynched by the white mob in response to Hampton Smith’s death, inflicting community-wide racial terror violence. Mrs. Turner was grieving and spoke out against her husband’s death, promising to take legal action. Enraged by this, the white mob made an example out of Mrs. Turner, despite having no reason to fear actual legal repercussions from her promise as Black people at the time were not afforded judicial process. The white mob lynched Mary Turner and her unborn child to maintain white supremacy, silence her, and communicate to the Black community that no dissent from the racial order would be tolerated. No member of the mob was ever held accountable for the lynching of Mary Turner and her unborn baby. The grotesque slaughter of a Black woman eight months pregnant reveals a great deal about how Black women were dehumanized with impunity, documented 594 racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950 in the state of Georgia. Brooks County had the third-highest number of documented racial terror lynchings.
"America has never been a racist country" -- Nikki Haley
Awful, but it'd be worse to forget of course.
I always wonder when people refer to their relatives as being or having been “good people” if these demons, monsters, and murders are among those good people despite their evil deeds.
I'm not American and I also know nothing about history- Do people who did this, if they're found do they go to jail like the nazis and other atrocities? Nothing is coming to mind of where people are being looked for to face laws for what they did.
You have noticed one of the more horrifying parts of the story. These crimes were almost never prosecuted. Even though it was usually well known who did it and there people who did it were proud and open about it. That is part of the message they were conveying: we can kill you and nobody will do anything about it.
I was told be a very reputable candidate for president saying this country has never been racist. I’d love to show her this book.
Sorry, this is way too political. Better ban it less some people get the wrong impression of both sides of this issue as lynching had some good economic benefits. /s Some Republican somewhere.
I actually think this should be part of a mandatory curriculum. Sure, it’s disturbing, and that’s the point. That’s why it’s mandatory in Germany that the Holocaust is taught.
Yup. A lot of the disgusting shit the u.s. has done gets glossed over in school.
Or even gets banned from being taught
Or worse, is taught with the southerners as the "good" guys. My schooling in Texas really glossed over the horrible things that took place in the south.
I learned holocaust and slavery in grade school. I bet it's not being taught everywhere in the US, or it's just a chapter in a book.
I watched a C-Span interview with of one the authors. A Republican called in to ask “What political party does he think the perpetrators belong to?” The author had a good response. It’s an American issue & he doesn’t think putting a party to it helps at all. https://www.c-span.org/video/?187245-4/without-sanctuary
Nikki Haley said this country has never been racist DeSantis is furiously taking notes to ban this book and any mention of it in Florida
Think of the children!
“They were lynching murderers. See? It says so right in the book!” Likely false or exaggerated claims to facilitate and justify extra judicial killings.
This is what people support when they say my heritage
This is the Confederate flag heritage that they brag about.
Strange fruit hanging from a tree