Despite the proof, many people today will not believe or refuse to acknowledge that such horrors occurred in America not so long ago. “These images give evidence to an American catastrophe,” the caption reads. —John Lewis, a member of Congress Between 1882 and 1950, 3,436 black people were lynched, according to the Tuskegee Institute. This is most likely a minor percentage of the lynchings, which were rarely publicised and led to the formation of the NAACP in 1909, a group dedicated to passing federal anti-lynching legislation. During all of this terror and bloodshed, someone—often a professional photographer—carried a camera and captured the scenes on film.
