Lynching postcard

A lynching postcard is a postcard bearing the photograph of a lynching—a vigilante murder usually motivated by racial hatred—intended to be distributed, collected, or kept as a souvenir. Often a lynching postcard would be inscribed with racist text or poems. Lynching postcards were in widespread production for more than fifty years in the United States, although their distribution through the United States Postal Service was banned in 1908.

Part of a series on the
Nadir of American race relations
Violence in the 1906 Atlanta race massacre
Historical background Reconstruction era Voter suppression Disfranchisement Redeemers Compromise of 1877 Jim Crow laws Segregation Anti-miscegenation laws Convict leasing
Practices Common actions Expulsions of African Americans Lynchings Lynching postcards Sundown town Whitecapping Vigilante groups Black Legion Indiana White Caps Ku Klux Klan Red Shirts
Lynchings Andrew Richards Michael Green Nevlin Porter and Johnson Spencer Eliza Woods Amos Miller George Meadows Joe Vermillion Jim Taylor Joe Coe People's Grocery Ephraim Grizzard Alfred Blount Samuel J. Bush Stephen Williams Frazier B. Baker and Julia Baker John Henry James Sam Hose George Ward David Wyatt Marie Thompson Watkinsville Ed Johnson William Burns Walker family Laura and L. D. Nelson King Johnson John Evans Jesse Washington Newberry Six Anthony Crawford Ell Persons Jim McIlherron George Taylor John Hartfield 1920 Duluth James Harvey and Joe Jordan Joe Pullen
Massacres and riots Opelousas massacre Rock Springs massacre Thibodaux massacre Spring Valley Race Riot of 1895 Phoenix election riot Wilmington insurrection of 1898 Pana riot Robert Charles riots Evansville race riot Atlanta Massacre of 1906 Springfield race riot of 1908 Johnson–Jeffries riots 1912 racial conflict in Forsyth County 1917 Chester race riot East St. Louis riots Elaine massacre Red Summer Chicago race riot of 1919 Washington race riot of 1919 Ocoee massacre Tulsa race massacre Perry race riot Rosewood massacre
Reactions Anti-lynching movement Exodusters movement Atlanta Compromise Niagara Movement NAACP Great Migration Back to Africa movement
Related topics Black genocide Civil rights movement (1865–1896) Civil rights movement (1896–1954) Mass racial violence in the United States
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Terror lynchings as a display of racial domination peaked around the 1880s through to the 1940s, and were less frequent until the 1970s, especially (but not exclusively) in the Southern United States.^[1] Lynchings were widely used to intimidate recently emancipated African Americans after the Civil War Reconstruction era,^[2] and were later used to intimidate voters and civil rights workers^[3] of all ethnic backgrounds. Mostly African-American^[1] men, women, and children were lynched, for a lack of subservience or for success in business.^[4] Others were often accused of crimes and forcibly removed from their homes or jails^[5] to be murdered by a white supremacist mob without due process or presumption of innocence.^[6]

Spectators sold one another souvenirs including postcards.^[7] Often the photographer was one of the killers.^[8]

In a typical lynching postcard, the victim is displayed prominently at the center of the shot, while smiling spectators, often including children,^[7] crowd the margins of the frame, posing for the camera to prove their presence. Facial expressions suggesting remorse, guilt, shame, or regret are rare.^[8]

Some purchasers used lynching postcards as ordinary postcards, communicating unrelated events to friends and relatives. Others resold lynching postcards at a profit.^[6] Still others collected them as historical objects or racist paraphernalia: their manufacture and continued distribution was part of white supremacist culture, and has been likened to "bigot pornography".^[9]

Whatever their use, the cultural message embodied in most lynching postcards was one of racial superiority. Historian Amy Louise Wood argues:

Within specific localities, viewers did not disconnect the photographs from the actual lynchings they represented. Through that particularity, the images served as visual proof for the uncontested 'truth' of white civilized morality over and against supposed black bestiality and savagery. ^[9]

Viewed from an outsider's perspective, bereft of local context, the postcards symbolized white power more generally. White citizens were depicted as victorious over powerless murdered black victims, and the pictures became part of secular iconography.

Richard Lacayo, writing for Time magazine, noted in 2000:

Even the Nazis did not stoop to selling souvenirs of Auschwitz, but lynching scenes became a burgeoning subdepartment of the postcard industry. By 1908, the trade had grown so large, and the practice of sending postcards featuring the victims of mob murderers had become so repugnant, that the U.S. Postmaster General banned the cards from the mails.^[10]

As late as 2000, James Allen was able to acquire a collection of lynching postcards from dealers who offered them in whispered tones and clandestine marketplaces.^[8]

Some towns had censored lynching photographs earlier in the 20th century, but the first step toward nationwide censorship came in 1908.^[11] The 1873 Comstock Act had forbidden the publication of "obscene matter as well as its circulation in the mails".^[11] In 1908, §3893 was added to the Comstock Act, extending the ban to material "tending to incite arson, murder, or assassination".^[11] Although this act did not explicitly ban lynching postcards themselves, it banned the racist text that often accompanied them, which made "too explicit what was always implicit in lynchings".^[11]

Despite the amendment, the distribution of lynching photographs and postcards continued, now concealed within envelopes or mail wrappers.^[12][13]

The 2021 documentary short Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day documents said souvenirs.^[14][15]

• Coon card – Postcards with anti-black racist imagery
• History of postcards in the United States
• Lynching of Laura and L. D. Nelson
• Lynching of Leo Frank
• Lynching in the United States § Photographic records and postcards
• Nazi memorabilia
• Murderabilia
• Nadir of American race relations

• Allen, James; Littlefield, John (2018) [2000]. Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. Twin Palms Publishers. ISBN 978-0-944092-69-9. Retrieved February 7, 2019.
• Apel, Dora (2004). Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob. New Brunswick, N.J.; London: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-3459-6.
• Kim, Linda (2012). "A Law of Unintended Consequences: United States Postal Censorship of Lynching Photographs". Visual Resources. 28 (2). Taylor & Francis: 171–193. doi:10.1080/01973762.2012.678812. S2CID 159670864.
• Oney, Steve (2004). And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. New York, New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-679-76423-6.
• Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. (2012). The End of American Lynching. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-5292-7. JSTOR j.ctt1bqzmzg.
• Wolters, Wendy (2004). "Without Sanctuary: Bearing Witness, Bearing Whiteness" (PDF). Jac. 24 (2): 399–425. JSTOR 20866631.
• Wood, Amy Louise (2005). "Lynching Photography and the Visual Reproduction of White Supremacy". American Nineteenth Century History. 6 (3: Lynching Reconsidered: New Perspectives in the Study of Mob Violence). Taylor & Francis: 373–399. doi:10.1080/14664650500381090. S2CID 144176806.
• Young, Harvey (2005). "The Black Body as Souvenir in American Lynching". Theatre Journal. 57 (4): 639–657. doi:10.1353/tj.2006.0054. JSTOR 25069734. S2CID 129940032.

• Lynching Postcards: 'Token of A Great Day'. Paramount Plus. 2021.
• Lynching Postcards on IMDb
• Official trailer