te family. The mobs, which were the murderers, made sure that the public heard the most vicious story about the victim in order to insure that there was no person that believed the act was unjust.
             These lynchings were held in public settings, in the public's eye, but there are missing records for lynched victims because the cause of death was recorded as unknown. "Even as the newspapers published detailed accounts from the mouths of eyewitnesses, the coroner or his jury would name the cause of death as 'at the hands of persons unknown,'" (177). These victims soon became statistics, just numbers and dead bodies, which is why there are only documents about certain lynch incidents. The lynching of John Henry Williams is one of the murders that are not intensely researched, but Lois Mailou Jones took the time to represent his lynching in the remarkable piece entitled "Mob Victim."
             In 1945 Lois Mailou Jones painted "Mob Victim." It is a representation of the lynching of John Henry Williams, which occurred June 24, 1921. John Henry Williams is one of thousands of lynch victims. Williams was lynched for unknown reason and unjust severity. To be lynched may have included many severe things beyond being hung. "The method of murder might include mutilation, castration, skinning, roasting, burning, hanging, and shooting," (177). Williams sang "Nearer My God To Thee," a spiritual, while he was being tortured and about to be burned alive. Jones happened to come across a man on U Street in Washington, D.C. in shabby clothes with a certain look on his face. She was searching for a model for the "Mob Victim" and this man embodied the look
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