I can't look at that pic without thinking "It's Candy Slice!"

This one always freaked me out,I remember seeing the actual film footage of this exection when I was a kid and it was the matter of fact way in which the army guy just walked up and shot him that got me.. scary

Harold "Doc" Edgerton's seminal work in high speed photography.

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whats that of?

a lynching , I would suspect it is in the south some where ,

Yup. Strange Fruit.

That picture is I think a salutary lesson to anyone who thinks African Americans are making a big deal out of stuff that happened a long time ago. It really wasn't so long ago that lynching black men was no big deal in the South. Look at that photograph and look at the whites al gathered around. Do they look like they just ended the life of two human beings, or do they look like they just strung up a couple of wild animals? Some of the children of those people are likely to still be alive and well. It wasn't such a long time ago at all.

those look like white guys hanging to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Fruit

Here's a link to a page about the (excellent) song written about the event.

Where I'm from, Indiana is not the south.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Shipp

I have a friend who witnessed a lynching. He is black and was a child at the time.

IF they did actually commit the rape they were accused of then black or white, lynch them.

That's a huge if. Accusations of rape of white women, by black men was one of the de rigour weapons of the white supremacists throughout the period from reconstruction, through Jim Crow and into the Civil Rights era.

Also....you say 'if they did actually commit the rape...then lynch them'. How does a lynch mob determine guilt? Without due process and a legal defence, how can you be sure the person you are lynching is guilty? Because someone pointed to them and said 'It was them'?

ffs, sorry the "IF" in capitals in my post wasn't big enough and that i couldn't be bothered explaining the legal process that determined whether "they did actually commit the rape" was a fair and unbiased one or not. and sorry my "black or white" line wasn't clear enough that i wasn't talking about that exact situation but rather the crime in general. so putting that "..." in quoting me completely changes what i said.

now can we get back to iconic photographs.

sheesh!