Lawrence Beitler - Lynchings
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Lawrence Beitler took this iconic photograph on August 7, 1930, showing the lynching of Thomas Shipp 
and Abram Smith. It sold thousands of copies, which Beitler stayed up for 10 days and nights printing 
them. It has become iconic over the years as it is one of the best and most recognisable images of 
lynching which at the time was commonplace, but now serves only as a reminder of the US pre-Civil Rights 
era. The photo shows a crowd that have turned out to view the lynching, and the audience a mixture of 
anger and fulfillment. The photo was so popular it has been the inspiration for many poems and songs 
down the years.

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Lynching 1930 A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these 
two young blacks accused of raping a white girl. The girl's uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming 
the man's innocence. Although this was Marion, Indiana most of the 5,000 lynchings documented between 
Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South. (Hangings, beatings and mutilations 
were called the sentence of "Judge Lynch.") Some lynching photos were made into postcards designed to 
boost white supremacy, but the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting many