When a black man named John Hartfield was lynched in Ellisville, Mississippi, on June 26, 1919 – hanged from a gum tree alongside nearby railroad tracks, riddled with bullets, and then burned – press coverage in newspapers throughout the country reported that ten thousand white men, women, and children had traveled from throughout the state to watch his gruesome murder. Photo postcards of the brutal spectacle were sold afterward and a gleeful spectator even boasted of cutting a finger from the corpse to keep as a souvenir. No reports, however, gave voice to the whispered horror, sadness, and fear of those who knew and loved John Hartfield, those who experienced his lynching as an act of terrorism aimed at intimidating the entire black community, and those who fled in fear for their own lives.
Full Story: http://www.eji.org/node/1150
Full Story: http://www.eji.org/node/1150
