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It has been a 158 year process, since The Emancipation Proclamation, similar to "denazification" in Germany, post WWII, abandoned due to denial fueled resistance. The federal "Juneteenth" national holiday legislation was not signed into law until
156 years after the news it commemorates the receipt of.
There is plenty of resistance to the attempts to dismantle American white supremacy and relegate its supporters to infamy instead of prominent public memorial. The problem is the victors write the history and it takes extra and meticulous effort to overcome that.
"...However, some of the almost 4,000 blacks who were lynched between 1882 and 1962 were lynched in settings that are appropriately described as picnic-like. Phillip Dray, a historian, stated: "Lynching was an undeniable part of daily life, as distinctly American as baseball games and church suppers. Men brought their wives and children to the events, posed for commemorative photographs, and purchased souvenirs of the occasion as if they had been at a company picnic." 2 Bray did not exaggerate. At the end of the 19th century, Henry Smith, a mentally challenged 17-year-old black male, was accused of killing a white girl. Before a cheering crowd of hundreds, Smith was made to sit on a "parade float" drawn by four white horses. The float circled numerous times before the excited crowd tortured, then burned Smith alive. 3 After the lynching the crowd celebrated and collected body parts as souvenirs.
Often the lynch mob acted with haste, but on other occasions the lynching was a long-drawn out affair with speeches, food-eating, and, unfortunately, ritualistic and sadistic torture: victims were dragged behind cars, pierced with knives, burned with hot irons or blowtorches, had their fingers and toes cut off, had their eyes cut out, and were castrated -- all before being hanged or burned to death. One Mississippi newspaper referred to these gruesome acts as "Negro barbeques." 4
In many cases -- arguably in most cases -- lynch mobs had a particular target and confined their heinous aggression to a specific person. Blacks were lynched for a variety of accusations, ranging from murder, and rape (often not true), to trying to vote, and arguing with a white man. In 1938, a white man in Oxford, Mississippi declared that it was "about time to have another lynching. When the niggers get so they are not afraid of being lynched, it is time to put the fear in them." 5 There were many blacks lynched randomly, to send a message of white supremacy to black communities. As noted by Dominic J. Capeci, a historian, when it came to lynching, "one black man served as well as another." 6.."
"...Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were lynched in Marion, Ind., in 1930. I was at a postcard show in Florida when I came across a photograph of this lynching. The photo was mounted on a mat that rested in a large, ornate frame. A large lock of one victim's hair sits under the photo, which shows the two victims dangling from a tree. A man in the foreground of the photo points to the bodies. Scribbled on the bottom border of the photo are the words: "Bo pointn to his niga." These lynchings were ritualistic killings that often included torture and souvenir harvesting. Not only were hair, body parts and ashes collected, but sometimes parts of the lynching tree were taken, in addition to pieces of the victim's clothing.
Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith - Wikipedia
Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930, photo by Lawrence Beitler
The lynchers were proud of what they did, so proud that they often posed in front of the cameras that recorded these festivals of violence. A post-lynching market frenzy of swapping and selling souvenirs sometimes flourished. Souvenir postcards were available for sale just hours after the gory event, not just in barrooms and back alleys but in drugstores, too. This barbaric commerce in lynching-related items had a strong impact on W.E.B. DuBois, who wrote:..."
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