By the 1930’s racial violence had increased, but the act of lynching had decreased. The depression sparked racial uproars throughout the nation not just the North, mainly these uproars came out of economic frustration and employment competition. You also had a lot of black workers who were not getting paid as their white counter parts were thus the backdrops for strikes, protest and riots. Police brutality was on the rise throughout the country, but in the Midwest and the south lynching was still the M.O. for checking and punishing African Americans. Thomas Shipp was African American who was lynched on August 7, 1930 in Marion Indiana along with Abram Smith. They had been arrested and charged the night before with murdering a factory worker and raping his white girlfriend. This photo would be the inspiration for Billie Holidays “Strange Fruit “of 1938. As America dealt with global concerns around this time a lot of countries used the existence of lynching in the U.S. as propaganda and lynching received a lot of back lash from foreign allies and grew to be an embarrassment of the U.S.
