Heirlooms and Accessories borrows imagery from the famous journalistic photograph (taken by Lawrence Beitler), which depicts a white crowd watching the lynching of two black men in Marion, Indiana in 1930. The men were accused of murdering a white man and assaulting his white girlfriend, and while held in the county jail, were taken and lynched in the public square by an enraged mob. In the photograph, three white spectators look in the opposite direction towards the photographer, engaging their eye contact with the viewer. Marshall has isolated these women and placed them in the lockets, powerfully signifying them as accessories to the tragedy, and containing their passive witness as heirlooms to the next generation.