https://blog.smu.edu/untolddallas/dallas1910/
This SMU writeup of a 1910 lynching in my hometown of Dallas, Texas is fascinating, but the image in it is worth all of the words.
This is the middle of downtown Dallas, an area I could be in in half an hour, packed at midday, with a gigantic crowd of people looking at a lynched man named Allen Brooks. Pictures from this lynching were used as postcards.
Obviously the lynching of Allen Brooks is a particularly extreme case, but note that this is in broad daylight in the downtown of what was a major city by Texas standards (though obviously far smaller than it would later become), and the mob of people who seized and strung up Allen Brooks did not wear masks or make any attempt to hide their identities, and men, women, and children alike, of apparently all elements of Dallas society at the time, are gathered together to witness the big event, and then commemorate it as a postcard to send to friends and family.
