The Lynching of Thomas Smith

A crowd of onlookers in Roanoke, some of them children, stare at the dead body of Thomas Smith, who had been lynched by a mob, probably the night before. The photograph was made by the local H. V. Lineback Photography Studio and dated September 21, 1893. The image was later sold to whites as a gruesome souvenir—and as a literal display of white supremacy.