#photography #whitesupremacy
Black History Month USA
ROBERT MCDANIEL
On April 13, 1937, Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniel, two black men, were lynched in Duck Hill, Mississippi by a white mob after being labeled as the murderers of a white storekeeper. They had only been legally accused of the crime a few minutes before they were kidnapped from the courthouse, chained to trees, and tortured with a blow torch. Following the torture, McDaniel was shot to death and Townes was burned alive.

Pictures taken, prior to Townes being lit on fire, were the first lynching photographs to be published by the national press. They were reprinted in Time Magazine and Life Magazine, and then in national newspapers.