QUESTION:
Did major retailers Walmart and Amazon sell a poster of a crowd lynching an African American man?
ANSWER:
Yes, the poster was listed by a third-party retailer on marketplaces by mistake. The poster has since been removed from Walmart and the third-party retailer suspended. On Amazon, the lynching posters are still available for purchase. Google Express pulled the posters from its site after reporting done by WUSA9's Verify team.
SOURCES:
Ravi Jariwala- Walmart Spokesperson
Screengrabs of Walmart.com
PROCESS:
Over Cyber Monday, civil rights activists in Annapolis, Maryland asked the public to tell Walmart, to stop selling posters of African American men being lynched.
Community activists Carl Snowden and Carmen Skarlupka, a 2018-candidate for 30B House delegate, took to Facebook to get the posters removed.
Skarlupka was conducting research on lynchings in Annapolis, Maryland when she came across the poster as a Black Friday deal.
Screengrabs from the Walmart.com website sent to our researchers by Skarlupka show that five lyching photos were being sold.
Our verify researchers contacted Walmart and a spokesperson confirmed, yes, the lynching posters were being sold on Walmart's marketplace by a third-party retailer. After receiving an angry customer service call, Walmart removed the posters.
"As soon we learned of these horrific images published by a third party seller, we removed them immediately," Ravi Jariwala, a Walmart spokesperson said. "This is a clear violation of our policy and we're appalled sellers thought it would be ok or go unchecked. We have reviewed the violating sellers and suspended them from our Marketplace."
Walmart.com is a marketplace, meaning they advertise products they make, own and ship as well as third-party merchandise that's integrated on their site and shipped by the third-party.
Other marketplaces, like Amazon currently have lynching posters available on their sites. Prior to the WUSA9 Verify team's reporting Google Express sold lynching posters on their site.
Since our reporting Google Express has flagged and removed all posters of lynchings from its site.
Our researchers traced the poster back to The Poster Corp., which operates Posterazzi.com.
Walmart confirmed Posterazzi was the third-party retailer, as did Amazon and Google Express.
A search for "lynching" bought up 75 posters on the Posterazzi site; five of those lynching posters made its way onto Walmart.com.
Our researchers tried contacting the owner of Posterazzi five times. He did not return our phone calls or email. After our calls all 75 posters removed from the site.
Offensive products are banned under Walmart's marketplace seller policy terms, including products displaying "explicit nudity," "vulgar language," "hatred," "tragedy," or "violence."
So if the photos were against Walmart policies, how did they make it onto their site?
A technical error.
While posters of lynchings are not allowed, books describing events in a historical context are.
"There was a technical error that incorrectly classified these items in a category not within 'posters and wall decor," Jariwala said. "It might have been categorized within 'books,' and for books there are probably many different references to the atrocities of that time...we are not trying to edit or censor the historical context if there's a reference in a book."
Still, he said, "That poster should never [have been] posted on the site."
So we can Verify, yes, posters depicting African American lynchings were sold on Walmart.com, and are still on marketplaces like Amazon. Google Express has pulled its posters following WUSA9's reporting.
