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Hard to tell from the photo, but it looks like my grandfather. The men are all young and pale, in 1920's clothes, crowding to make sure no one’s left out of the picture. It’s on a postcard that sold for a penny. I’m told they were common souvenirs for events like this. The man waving his hat might be him, craning his neck to be seen. It’s a grainy old black and white picture, but the nose and chin are right. And the smile, the proud smile like all the other men, fishermen showing off their hanging catch. The incident is in the history books I use to teach my high school students, but not the picture. My grandfather gives a small scholarship to a minority student from my school every year. He’s as white as the other men in the photo, though my sons aren’t. My grandfather only spoke of the incident once, and never said if he was there. He said you couldn’t understand unless you’ve been in the middle of a mob, that it becomes a single mind, a single pair of hands. But the men in the picture are smiling, pointing proudly to the lynched body, a black man accused of speaking lewdly to a white woman, and toward the edge of the picture, I think the one with the biggest smile is my grandfather, but I’m not sure.
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