Archeology of the Violated Black Body (Trigger Warning: It Ain’t Pretty)

“Here is what I would like for you to know: in America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage.” Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (2015)

Punishment Aboard a Slave Ship, 1792. Published in London, April 10, 1792. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Virginia Luxuries, circa 1800. Unknown artist. Courtesy: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum

Tools of Punishment, 1807. From Th. Branagan, The Penitential Tyrant, New York, 1807. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Branding Slaves, 1857. From Blake, The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, 1857. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Scars of Peter, 1863. A Whipped Mississippi Slave, Photo Taken April 2, 1863, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. National Archives and Records Administration

George Meadows, 1889. Murderer & Rapist, Lynched on Scene of His Last Crime. Jefferson County, Alabama, January 15, 1889. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Riot in Chicago, July 1919. Two white men stoning an African American to death. Public Domain

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, 1930. Lynched in Marion, Indiana, August 7, 1930. Courtesy: CSU Archives/Everett Collection

Emmett Till, 1955. Lynched at the age of 14, Money, Mississippi, August 28, 1955, after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till’s mother insisted on an open-casket funeral. The Chicago Defender