Lynching in America

Strange Fruit (1937)by Billie Holliday

Picture postcards from the early part of last century, which travelers sent back home, record their

appreciation of the public spectacle of lynching.

A lynching (1935) - note the children.

The front page of the Duluth News

Tribune on June 16, 1920, the day after

three black men were lynched by a mob in downtown

Duluth

The Lynching of Laura Nelson May 25, 1911, Okemah, OK

1935 Lynching of Rubin Stacey in Ft. Lauderdale,

FL

The lynching of Lige Daniels. August 3, 1920, Center, Texas.

(postcard, front and back)

The lynching of nineteen-year-old Elias Clayton, nineteen-year-

old. Elmer Jackson, and twenty-year-old

Isaac McGhie.June 15, 1920, Duluth,

MN

1919 Lynching of William Brown in Douglass County , NE

Lynching of Thomas Shipp & Abram Smith August 7, 1930 Marion, IN

1936 lynching of Lint Shaw in Royston, GA

Southern trees bear strange fruit,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.