Stephen Norton: Decent behavior progress

Josh Shaffer’s Oct. 5 column “Horrible hanging haunts Halloween,” about a public hanging in downtown Raleigh in 1900 and how the crowd regarded it as entertainment is a reminder that our “standards of decency” are certainly evolving.

I remember as a child seeing a photo of a lynching in a book called “The breathless moment: The world’s most sensational news photos.” It was a photo of a body hanging from a tree surrounded by a crowd of smiling faces.

We’ve made much progress, even if other parts of the world haven’t.

This story was originally published October 13, 2015 at 4:35 PM with the headline "Stephen Norton: Decent behavior progress."