Horror, Sleaze and Trash.

Southern sheriff proudly leans on tree with two lynched black men - The vociferous disapproval by Northern liberals of the Southern propensity for burning black men with a carnival-like atmosphere - such as Henry Smith in Paris, Texas; Sam Hose in Atlanta, Georgia; and Henry Lowry in Memphis, Tennessee - caused lynchings to be a less overtly community-sponsored event. Southerners thought that blacks born after the Civil War were undisciplined by slavery, and were certainly unschooled in proper race etiquette. Northern carpetbag teachers and tradesmen had not taught Southern blacks their proper role in Southern culture - it was up to the citizens of the former Confederate states to do so. The threat of lynching or a short life in the convict labor system was a powerful incentive for blacks to behave. With the rest of the country frowning on community burning, hanging a black man before or after he was shot and mutilated became the accepted norm. Masked and unmasked men abducted suspects from the law and provided this form of “Southern Justice.” Much of the time, lawmen participated in the lynchings. The suspects were usually dealt with at night, after honest Southern gentlemen had put in a hard day’s work. The next day, posing proudly beside the results of their night’s labor, photographs were taken to provide family photo albums with poignant symbols of Southern culture.

After the photographic postcard was approved for mailing in 1908, sending postcards of these events was very popular. Some photographic supply companies promised to send one a month to subscribers. This photographic postcard was eventually mailed (from Springfield, MO to Atlanta, GA), thus making it even more valuable. The Jim Crow laws of the 1890s and the convict labor system had totally devalued a black person’s life. One old black Southerner recalled that in those days, “They had to have a license to kill anything but a nigger. We was always in season.” Turn-of-the-century medical and criminal sciences supported Southern views; the degeneration theory popular between 1870 and 1910 and the feeblemindedness theory (1905-1920), along with criminal anthropology studies, labeled blacks as inferior human beings with atavistic tendencies which made their animalistic behavior natural. This photograph style of posing with a black man hanging from a tree is similar in composition to that of a proud hunter with his kill.