Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America

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Get some friends and put together a discussion group around the reading, and bring lots of napkins, and expect surprises - especially when viewing the photos. Allen for bringing these postcards and photos to our faces, so that this pornography of evil, stupidity, self-righteousness and barbarism can be seen for what it was, what it is, and what it still might be, so we can say "Never Again" to this Holocaust too. I recently visited the Roth Horowitz Gallery in New York City to gaze again at that photograph, and 59 other images of lethal brutality meeted out to blacks by the vigilante's noose.

First of all, without being absurdly cliche (minus the punctuation marks) about what a picture is worth, you only need to see the accidental photgraphic essay on Froggy's demise to grasp how big a deal this is. Rather, I find that what this books shows through its keyhole is that men can be made ill and evil by their individual and communal beliefs, by their thoughtless brutalities. The essays at the beginning are also useful, too, though Hilton Als' is the only one that will stand up to the test of time. A poor condition book can still make a good reading copy but is generally not collectible unless the item is very scarce. After all, it was O’Connor who noted of the Southern grotesque, in its human incarnation, the lack of mere humor or quirky diversion that characterized “Gothic” or “grotesque” elements in other regions’ literature.To accompany the spirit of public lynchings then, people bought and sold and circulated picture-postcards of these lynchings, and sent them to family and friends accompanied by handwritten notes that said things like, “This is the barbecue we had last night. The extreme savagery of lynching may surprise those who had assumed that this activity involved "mere" hanging. What I really appreciate about the memorial, from what I’ve seen is the way it forces us to participate and feel implicated as spectators, and the way it takes the spectacle of the body out of it,” she said.

Litwack published to coincide with a 2000 circulating exhibition of examples from James Allen's collection of harrowing vintage photographic scenes of American lynchings. Taking a broader view than I was able to find, Harris-Perry points out that the act was never about protecting vulnerable white women from "brute"--i.

With a voice both wise and witty, Gwendolyn Brooks crafted poems that captured the urban Black experience and the role of women in society. Black-and-white photographs of black bodies lynched, hanging from trees, from bridges, damning their lynchers, but also their entire nation, confronting all who view them with silent accusation. In terms of being thought provoking, this books is a "5", but I can't "like" this chronicle of abomination.