In the case of lynching, the discourses emerge from heated debates on the meaning of the practice; these debates evolve over the long history of lynching in America. At different times in the 19th and 20th centuries, the term "lynching" implied quite different historical acts within the community. It has also been used to refer to acts indicating a wide range of distinct motivations, strategies, technologies, and meanings, as well as a politically crowded term. For many African Americans growing up in the South in the 18th and 19th centuries, the threat of lynching was commonplace. Photographs and postcards depicting the popular image of an angry white mob mobbing a black man do not provide a complete historical picture. Studying lynching in the United States through photographs helps raise awareness of racial tensions. Lynching, an act of terror intended to instill fear among black people, served the broad social purpose of maintaining white supremacy in the economic, social, and political spheres. During the Civil War and Reconstruction era, lynching marked a pivotal period in the United States. It was widespread in the Midwest and West and abundant in the South. Lynching occurred for many reasons, with brazen public protests advertised in newspapers attracting large crowds of white families and revealing a key role in providing controversial moral support. Before the Civil War, lynching was practiced to enforce vigilance over their way of life and their white women. Early practitioners of lynching resorted to what they described as "frontier justice," the main reason being that local and federal government agencies were of little use in "those parts." Compared to later events...... middle of paper ......t the perseverance of past practices. In other words, there is complicity throughout the lynching photos affair. The act of lynching was far from a momentary phenomenon. “The motivation, organization, and practice of the massacres were consistent with the most deeply held beliefs and social identity of the people of the regions beyond the Alleghenies, where they dominated after the war. » The people who carried out the lynching and those who disagreed with their actions were heavily invested in certain conceptions of the punishment of violence as implementation, in opposing views on "the status social, culture and ethnicity as well as differences between men and women and adults and children. » Ensuring white domination and recognition of what the lynchers perceived as the difference between the races was the difference that mattered most to the lynchers..