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 Ida B. Wells 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.