"Free (?) America"
The gruesome lynching of a mentally disabled man, Henry Smith in Paris, Texas, in February 1893, sparked renewed visual critique in the African American press regarding federal inaction on lynching. The mob’s torture of Henry Smith seemed to contradict the nation’s values, these editors believed. “Free (?) America” quipped the terse, sarcastic caption to an illustration of Smith’s torture in Wisconsin’s <a title="Northwestern Recorder" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/195"><em>Northwestern Recorder</em></a>.
owproject
2013-06-30 18:07:04
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"The Great Southern Exodus"
In its election-eve issue in 1892, perhaps to encourage the exodus that <a title="Ida B. Wells" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/202">Ida B. Wells</a>’s campaign had begun, the <a title="Indianapolis Freeman" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/199"><em>Indianapolis Freeman</em></a> re-printed a drawing by the late political cartoonist, <a title="Henry J. Lewis" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/193">Henry J. Lewis</a>. A series of frames reminded readers that migration was another form of protest against local and state governments that had failed to punish lynching. The image shows African American men, women, and families in a train station, departing the South. Insets depict whippings, lynching, and pursuit by dogs that help to explain “The Great Southern Exodus.”
owproject
2013-07-01 18:23:24
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"Our Republic"
In this image, widely reproduced in the African American press, popular white political cartoonist Thomas Nast captured the outrage that followed the lynching of three African American men in Memphis, Tennessee a few months earlier--the incident that catapulted <a title="Ida B. Wells" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/202">Ida B. Wells</a> to prominence as an anti-lynching activist. Under a banner that reads “Our Republic Can Only Exist So Long as Its Citizens Respect and Obey Their Self-Imposed Laws,” the symbolic figure of Justice simultaneously halts a lynching and renders retaliation unnecessary. “Take not the law into your own hands, for where will that end?” she asks. Only due process, the image implies, can avert a downward spiral of retributive violence.
owproject
2013-07-04 07:06:32
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The Southern Outrages
During the winter of 1889–1890, the killing of prisoners by a white mob in Barnwell, South Carolina, and a “race war” in Georgia, prompted the <a title="Indianapolis Freeman" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/199"><em>Indianapolis Freeman</em></a> to unleash a more pointed visual critique of so-called southern chivalry. This image, probably the work of satirical cartoonist <a title="Moses L. Tucker" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/194">Moses L. Tucker</a>, lampoons the hideous cavaliers as they lynch African American men for sport; the subtitle reads: “Trees of Georgia Still Bearing Evil Fruit.”
owproject
2013-07-08 05:36:55
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"Ethiopia to Uncle Sam"
This drawing in the <a title="Indianapolis Freeman" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/199"><em>Indianapolis Freeman</em></a> shows Uncle Sam standing impotently before a robed figure, Ethiopia, as she gestures toward the shooting of innocent African American men and women, and a burning church. “See how my people are murdered, maltreated and outraged in the South,” Ethiopia says, “and you, with a great army and navy, are taking no measures to prevent it.” Ethiopia was a recurring figure in <em>Freeman</em> iconography, who represented strong advocacy of equal protection and due process.
owproject
2013-07-09 15:43:28
377
"Occurences"
In the late summer of 1889, the <em><a title="Indianapolis Freeman" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/199">Indianapolis Freeman</a> </em>used the figure of Uncle Sam to protest a Gouldsboro, Louisiana, massacre of African American families on an excursion, and the burning of a church, as a symbol of federal protection. In this image, members of the Ku Klux Klan cower behind a tree, from which one lynch victim hangs, as a second man flees to safety. The caption emphasizes the persistence of violence in the South, its “daily or rather nightly occurrence.” Uncle Sam and a Union soldier advance with rifles and bayonet in hand, a reference to the government’s power, during military Reconstruction at least, to suppress mob violence.
owproject
2013-07-10 06:14:29
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