Fact Finding

I first saw Mary "Laura" Nelson in the book Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (2000). The book is composed of photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout America. There was something unique about this lynch image. Laura is the lone female in a book of men who took their last breath before they were executed by hanging from a tree or lamppost. Laura was hung next to her son, L. D., from the Canadian Railroad Bridge. The photographer captured four images—two wide angle shots and two individual postmortem portraits. One was of the dead woman. One of her son. The image of the postcard is both aesthetically pleasing and gruesome. Each scene is picturesque. In one of the long exposures there are fifty-eight onlookers on the bridge—thirty-five men, six women, and seventeen children—with two bodies hanging below. Mary and L. D.'s bodies tragically reflect on the water. Righteous indignation is displayed on the faces of the men, women, and children who had gathered on the Canadian Bridge, dressed in their Sunday best, on a bright Thursday morning in 1911. The lynching took place on a Wednesday night. Just in time to make the cover of the weekly newspaper which was published on Thursday. Etched in the negative in white letters is the copyright and the year of creation. The photographer has written his name, the number of the postcard, and the state where the picture was captured. The postcard was intended as art and is a signed and numbered piece. The location is listed as Okemah, Oklahoma.

Oklahoma is where I live.

Laura's black body hangs listlessly in a blue calico dress, the gold wedding band gleaming from her finger as evidently as the breast milk stains on her chest. Her black corpse blows in the wind. Her back is to her son L. D.'s dead body. The boy is suspended in air, rope around his neck. His arms are tied behind his twelve-year-old back. Pants around his ankles. Proof of his castration whited out by the photographer before production of the postcard. This was done to protect the integrity of its white viewers. This is a staged shot. Their black bodies deliberately placed. The family was executed at the Canadian Bridge so that the thriving black community of Boley could see them at morning light. A warning. Like Mike Brown's body was left on a Ferguson, Missouri street for hours after his assassination. This is an act of domestic terrorism.

Deanna Bowen, The Coatesville Lynching of 1911, 2015.

Digital collage. Courtesy of the artist.

All images in this article are from Deanna Bowen's series Hunting the Nigs in Philadelphia: Or An Alternate Chronology of Events Leading Up to and One Year Beyond the Columbia Avenue Uprisings, August 28–30 1964.

This postcard is a crime scene. I am consumed with Mary Laura Nelson. I research every detail of her life and death. I canvass the historical library, pour through newspaper articles, conduct interviews, and create timelines. There are benefits to not having white privilege when you research an atrocity committed against your people. You are not satisfied with the excuse that your people are animals. There are benefits to living in the space where an atrocity happened. You have more time to look. You have the benefit of exhausting all loopholes. Chasing all rabbit trails. It takes time. I enlarge the postcard to its lifesize. It is already larger than life. I staple the scene of their murder to my walls.

Deanna Bowen, Mob Spirit at Its Height, 2015.

Digital collage. Courtesy of the artist.

Documents concerning the family's life and death are my wall-paper. Other documents of the family's murder have somehow become intermingled among my own personal documents. Laura and I are similar in stature. We are both dark. We both have a son. Her story compels me to continue my research. It's like coded language. Laura's son L. D. is described...