Austin Porter

Austin Porter Share Special Exhibits The Freedom-Lovers’ Roll Call Wall Stories Behind the Postcards: Paintings and Collages of Jennifer Scott Risking Everything: The Fight for Black Voting Rights Portraiture of Resistance Memorial to the Victims of Lynching Freedom-Lovers’ Pledge Echoes of Equality: Art Inspired by Memphis and Maya Explore Our Galleries African Peoples Before Captivity…

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James “Jim” MCkie

James “Jim” Mckie Share Special Exhibits The Freedom-Lovers’ Roll Call Wall Stories Behind the Postcards: Paintings and Collages of Jennifer Scott Risking Everything: The Fight for Black Voting Rights Portraiture of Resistance Memorial to the Victims of Lynching Freedom-Lovers’ Pledge Echoes of Equality: Art Inspired by Memphis and Maya Explore Our Galleries African Peoples Before…

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Anthony Crawford – Father, Husband, Landowner, Farmer

Doria Johnson, great-great granddaughter of Anthony Crawford, recounts his lynching and the effect it had on the lives of his descendants. Updates to this posting include articles about a commemorative ceremony in 2005 and the dedication of a plaque at the hallowed ground in 2016. Video, photos and text.

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An Iconic Lynching in the North

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

On a hot August night in 1930, 15,000 people flooded into the small Indiana town of Marion to see a great spectacle. Three black teenagers were being lynched for supposedly raping a white woman and killing a white man. The boys were savagely beaten by a mob of men, women and children. One by one they were hanged. Two died – but with the rope already tightening around his neck, one boy was saved.

The souvenir photo taken of this “spectacle lynching” is very well-known. They say it inspired the song “Strange Fruit,” written by teacher Abel Meeropol and made popular by singer Billie Holiday.

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