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This card was purchased at a garage sale
in Macon, Missouri. The seller related what he knew of the postcard's
history and assured that it was a photograph of a lynching that took place
in Missouri. Researchers confirm the symbolic importance of lynching
sites and the conscious selection of these sites by perpetrators of extra-legal
violence. The dominance of Christian symbology is resurected in the
lynchers' preference for bodies of water, bridges, and landmark trees. Bodies
of water are the traditional locations for baptisms; bridges symbolize the
most profound rite of passage, the great "crossing over" to death;
and trees are the very symbol of life and of Christ's crucifixion. The
lynchers sought, in the conscious selection of these sacrificial sites and
in their participation in these ritualized murders, their own salvation
and passage to a safer place without sin and evil - both of which, in their
minds, were physically embodied in the "offending" victim. |