Abstract

After the Reconstruction period in the American South, racial violence reached its height through the prevalence of lynchings that targeted African American men. Artists used references to Christianity, a religion shared across racial and economic divides, to directly call attention to lynching as a moral injustice of the highest order. Both African American and white artists used representations of black Crucifixion scenes to link Christian martyrdom and brutality with the historical fact of lynching to create universal symbols of suffering. While an established body of scholarship exists on the relationship between Crucifixion and lynching imagery, this paper dives deeper into the visual culture of lynching narratives through a comparative analysis of different forms of imagery and their diverse audiences. Specifically, this inquiry analyzes motivating factors behind three visuals forms frequently used to depict lynchings: postcard photography, newspaper/magazine illustrations, and examples of easel painting. Photographs printed as postcards were used as memorabilia from public lynchings to immortalize the murder. In response to this spectacle, African Americans took control of the narrative by developing their own visual representations that countered the role of the lynching as a form of public spectacle and racial terror. For example, Lorenzo Harris, highlighted the brutality of the act and the apathetic response of the members of the crowd. Conversely, Fred Flemister increased the emotional response to his subject matter by portraying the aftermath of a lynching with familiar poses and compositions from Old Master paintings of the Deposition, a scene of mourning over the dead Christ. Each visual format created its own unique narrative and aimed to evoke a response from the intended audience.

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