Tyrone Williams and Chauntyll Allen said they went to Joe’s Crab Shack in Roseville, Minn., on Wednesday night for a friend’s early birthday dinner when they looked down at their table and saw it: a photograph, embedded inside the table, depicting the public hanging of a black man.
“It had a cartoon character saying, ‘All I said was “I didn’t like the gumbo,” ‘ in a joking manner,” Williams said.
“I’m appalled,” Allen said at a news conference, organized by the Minneapolis NAACP.
Williams snapped a photo of the image titled “Hanging at Groesbeck, Texas, on April 12, 1895” and contacted the Minneapolis chapter of the civil rights organization.
Ignite Restaurant Group, the parent company of Joe’s Crab Shack, has apologized for what it described as an offensive photo.
“We take this matter very seriously, and the photo in question was immediately removed,” Ignite COO David Catalano said, KARE reported. “We sincerely apologize to our guests who were disturbed by the image, and we look forward to continuing to serve the Rose ville community.”
During the 1800s and early 1900s, it was common practice to produce postcards of public lynchings and executions.
Horrifying images carried joking captions such as “You missed a good time.”
