Description:

INDIANA LYNCHING PHOTO
Rare first-generation photograph of one of the most reproduced (and chilling) photographs of a lynching ever recorded, that of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Ind. on Aug. 7, 1930. This image 5 1/2" x 3 1/2" b/w and portrays the victims in mid-air, with the crowd below, one smiling man with his date, another regarding the camera and threateningly pointing to one of the bodies. The verso bears a period description in pencil. A clean tear into image repaired on verso, still good. Shipp and Smith had been arrested the night before their murder, charged with robbing and murdering a white factory worker and raping his girlfriend. A large crowd broke into the jail with sledgehammers, beat the two men, and hanged them. When Abram Smith tried to free himself from the noose as his body hauled up by the rope, he was lowered and then his arms broken to prevent him from trying to free himself again. Police officers in the crowd cooperated in the lynching. Sold with a unrelated heavily retouched postcard photo of two Mexicans suspended from a tree with an armed man standing beneath, the scene described as one being "familiar" during the Mexican Revolution. Two pieces.

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October 9, 2010 11:00 AM EDT
Stamford, CT, US

Alexander Historical Auctions LLC

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