How far we have come. Some of these photographs are less than 50 years old. Some of the folks pointing and jeering in the crowd shots could have been my grandparents. Yes, we've come a long way, but this book should also remind us of how close we still are.
"Memories" was the theme of Kodak ads of a decade ago. Photographs are memories but unlike memories in our minds, or captured in text, photographic memories have a timeless reality about them.
We live in a time of images. We've seen just about every conceivable horrific image imagineable: a man's brains being blown out on a Saigon street, Kent State College students mortally wounded on the campus sidewalk, the Holocaust, and not to fret, still more to come tomorrow.
Questions. Photographs like these ask questions. It is inconceivable that I, or any of my friends, or that any of the readers of these reviews could do such a thing or even be a party to such a thing. Why? Are we that fundamentally different from our grandparents and great grandparents? Are we who we are or are we a product of our time? If our times change do we? I think in many of these other pictures where we see this kind of injustice and brutality, we quickly identify with the victim. That could be you or me bleeding on the sidewalk at Kent State. I would never be party to such acts as these, and I find it appalling to even contemplate it, but try as hard as I can not to, I can see myself in the crowd in the lynching pictures. These were ordinary people in ordinary places in ordinary times. Why would I have been any different? There is where the real horror lies.
Question: What to do with the book now. Hide it away with my other collection of photo books? Put it on the coffee table to demonstrate: my bad taste in art?, my superior morality?, my love of photography?, my unshockability?, or will I put it there to trap and shock the shockable? This book does not have an easy place to exist. This is not a photography book. The book is about more than the photographs. The pictures are about more than lynching. It is a powerful book and one that should cause one to think. Photography can do that sometimes.
Twenty-three States, one shy of 50% of the Continental United States, are represented in this book. Many of the States not involved are sparsely populated to this day. To say this genocide/holocaust was pervasive is more than reasonable. I use holocaust in its literal meaning of "wholly consumed by fire". I note the difference, as the events in Nazi Germany did not take place here. The burning of human victims on the soil of The United States has its own distinctive horror, which must be acknowledged as part of our History.
The word History often implies a buffer of time; a space to distance ourselves from what some would like to forget. I have read, "Blacks should get over it". This is generally a claim that all this sadism ended with Lincoln. It is true that "only" 75% of the lynchings in the book are of "Blacks", but as the number of lynchings decreased the percentage rose to 90%. This book shows a lynching from the 1960's, NOT the 1860's. If the authors chose to include other photos, the murder by dragging in Texas of a "Black" man would bring us if not literally to today, then a number of years so low in single digits, recounting it as a number of months ago may be more reasonable.
The other vacuous defense I have noted is, "I, my Family, my Grandparents, never did own slaves", and so on. And so what? What is documented in this book is less prevalent today because you will likely be caught and jailed/executed, because the world is watching, and now we care what others think. Do people suppose the basic nature of those that did or watched these acts, many of who are alive today has changed? Change doesn't happen in 40 years. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to sign anti-lynching legislation, while one million black soldiers fought for what this Country is supposed to represent, he sent a message not just about losing the Southern vote for his Presidency, but a much wider apathy.
The sport of lynching attracted huge crowds. Special trains would bring entire Families to watch. One murder and mutilation was witnessed by 15,000 people. One 9 year old who could easily be alive today, and if so I truly hope is sane and was only an unwilling victim of Parents stated "I have seen a man hanged" he told his Mother "now I wish I could see one burned".
What the book did not mention, and what would be devastating if done, is if the press chose to track down the participants and or the viewers. The photographs are there, the companies that made the postcards are probably gone, but the postcards were addressed. Some of the deviants of our species highlighted their faces when sending the cards to friends and Family.
What would that exposure accomplish, for what is in those pictures is part of all of us, it is our nature. We are the only species that tortures its own for pleasure and amusement. From the text;
"What was strikingly new and different in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the sadism and exhibitionism that characterized white violence. To kill the victim was not enough; the execution became public theater, a participatory ritual of torture and death, a voyeuristic spectacle prolonged as long as possible (once for 7 hours) for the benefit of the crowd".
And it gets worse, parts of victims displayed in store windows, the scramble for body parts as mementos. Piece of human bone on a watch chain perhaps? And if you can imagine, there is even more.
To this day our President can say nothing in terms of an official apology. Were he to do so the subject of reparations would arise, and that would be inconvenient now wouldn't it?
Mr. Randall Robinson wrote "The Debt What America Owes To Blacks" that I believe would interest those who have read this work. The book "The Unsteady March: The Rise And Decline of Racial Equality in America" by Philip A. Klinkner and Rogers M. Smith, also makes excellent reading.
Until we acknowledge as a people and as a Government, what happened in this Country for centuries, this book will be just that, a book. There will someday be a people capable of living in a Democracy and not abusing what it offers. If that Nation of People exists I have yet to read of them.
Germany took responsibility for it's crimes, why can't we. Why do we suffer as allies the Nation of Turkey that slaughtered Armenians by the millions, and to this day denied it happened?
The letter the man wrote below to his Children is beautiful. I wish I could agree with the thought that if we know our History we will not repeat it. We know what we have done, the style changes, but we as a people do not. We as a Nation do not require it of other Countries when we are arguably at our most influential. Not our business? Nonsense! Put our house in order, and if others desire our friendship, require the same. If we do not, History will repeat like the Seasons.
If it weren't for the stark, grotesque and vivid photos, you couldn't believe the stories. The butchery and inhumanity is incomprehensible; even more so when it becomes obvious the events were accepted and condoned by otherwise law-abiding citizens, "good, decent churchgoing folk." It's a poignant reminder of how easy it is for perceptions and societal points of view to overcome reason and civility.
There are no words ...
A couple of weeks later, I took a friend to the same bookstore. On the way there, I told him nothing about the book. When we arrived, I simply handed him the book, still telling him nothing. He, too, could have sat on the floor 30 minutes. The only reason he didn't was because a white female customer kept trying to distract him by recommending an "excellent" book on Black history (other than Without Sanctuary). He said little to her. As she kept babbling, other people in this huge bookstore began to look curiously at him and her. I became very nervous.
What I can say is that I wondered why someone would publish a book like this. How did the authors obtained SO MANY horrible photographs? And the authors found NAMES for the victims. I wonder about the survivors -- NOT of the happy, White onlookers and participants, for we Black Americans know and see such people everyday. Instead, I wonder about the survivors of the VICTIMS, especially of Laura Nelson and her young son hanging by their necks from a bridge while scores of murderous Whites looked on indifferently or with glee. Perhaps someone, anyone, might find the murderers and bring them to justice. Many of them are still alive, I am sure.
I am profoundly saddened, angered and motivated by this book. The only reason I gave the book 4 stars was because I feel so awful for the victims and their families.
This books should be in every African American household. Parents, grand parents and other elders need to sit down with their children and discuss their firsthand experience. The hip-hop generation should especially be taught by their elders. This book underscores the debt we young Black Americans owe people such as Dr. Martin Luther King.
Yeah, I know, I keep saying, there are no words .. yet I am still writing. Sorry for this long review. You need not publish this.
