I saw a lynching photo at my dad's house

It was morbid as hell. While helping my father in Kentucky clean out and arrange old family momentos, I came across an old black and white Kodak photo of a black man tied by his hands from a tree (not by his neck). He had the skin of his back cut in a horseshoe pattern. The skin had been pulled down away from his back and hung down almost to his knees exposing the muscle and rib cages beneath.

I asked my dad about the photo and he couldn't remember how he acquired it, but knew a bit about the story behind it. He said that the man had been acquitted in court of killing a relative of his, but the people in the community (blacks included, they were also in the photo), and decided to lynch him. My father said that the man surprisingly lived through the maiming only to die at a hospital several days later from infection. As far as he knew, no one was ever prosecuted for the lynching.

I asked my dad why he had kept the photo for so long and he replied that reminded him that people should never be treated in such a way.

The memory of seeing it makes me appreciate that lynchings are no more and thank goodness for that.