Description:
Four dark figures hanging from ropes from a tree over a fire
Label Text:
In the wake of the infamous trial of the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama (1931-1937), in which nine black teenage boys were accused and convicted of raping two white girls, there was a dramatic rise in the number of lynchings in the American south. Throughout the 1930s, both the NAACP and the American Communist Party struggled to gain support for a federal law against lynching that would pass both the House and the Senate (a similar movement during the 1920s had been unsuccessful). As public information on lynchings became more widespread, leftist artists produced a number of explicit and powerful prints depicting lynchings in an attempt to inspire both horror and condemnation among their viewers. José Clemente Orozco's The Hanged Men depicts four lynched figures, writhing in pain as white flames engulf their bodies. This print was produced as part of a portfolio published by the Contemporary Print Group, a collective of painters and printmakers who produced and sold their own prints. George Grosz's lithograph The Hero was also part of this portfolio.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1973.41.10 |
