(PHOTOGRAPHY) Group of seven photographs of a crowd at a pub

Sale 2105 - Lot 333

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Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000

(PHOTOGRAPHY.) Group of seven photographs of a crowd at a public execution of a black man, consisting of 5 6 1/2x10 and 2 8x10 photos; labels on reverse read "credit line must read: Photo from European." Np [rural United States, circa 1930s]

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While these do not qualify as "lynching" photographs," they certainly show the facial expressions of an entirely white crowd, some looking horrified, while others seem pleased. Many a black man was tried and summarily hanged without benefit of a lynch-mob. One large photograph shows the scaffold and the crowd of onlookers (probably after the hanging), four more show close-ups of the faces of the people in the crowd, adults as well as children, with one woman holding a baby girl in her arms; the last two are of the condemned man ascending the steps to the scaffold, and finally the hanged man.