"Horrible!"
In spring 1894, the Cleveland Gazette published this rare lynching image to protest the murder of Roscoe Parker, in West Union, Ohio. The paper included a simple pen-and-ink drawing of Parker’s lynched body—with the white mob sketched in the bottom left of the frame—but placed Parker’s portrait higher up to emphasize his humanity and retain dignity. The Ohio lynching made clear that lynching was a national problem, not confined to the South, and a federal response was necessary to quell the violence.