The Law Is Too Slow

Bellows, a progressive aligned with a group of artists known as the "Lyrical Left", had made a number of paintings and lithographs during World War I; they depicted atrocities and crimes against humanity believed to have been committed by German soldiers as they advanced into Belgium.

[2] The work was commissioned to illustrate an anti-lynching story in the May 1923 issue of The Century Magazine by American author Mary Johnston, "Nemesis": the supposed attack on a White woman by a Black man leads to a lynching.

The scene is set at night, and the surrounding men's faces, partly covered by masks, are lit by the fire, which also creates an area of light that engulfs and illuminates the victim.

Critic Dora Apel sees blood pouring from between the victim's legs, which suggests castration; she also posits that the way the events are staged makes the viewer part of the hooded and masked audience, a participant in the killing.

An article in the January 1928 issue of Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, listing a number of lynching victims from 1927 below a print of Bellows's lithograph, also had the same title.