Lynching Photographs Sold as Postcards Demonstrate Perpetrators' Impunity

Photographs of lynchings were commercially produced and sold as postcards throughout the early twentieth century. Identifiable perpetrators freely mailed these images to family members. No perpetrator was prosecuted based on photographic evidence. The postcards were eventually banned from the mail in 1908, though photographs continued to circulate. The uninhibited commercial distribution demonstrated complete impunity and the complicity of wider white communities.