Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America

In his introduction to this horrifying photographic record of racial terrorism, historian and professor Leon F. Litwack writes: "Obviously, it is easier to choose the path of collective amnesia, to erase such memories, to sanitize our past. It is far easier to view what is depicted on these pages as so depraved and barbaric as to be beyond the realm of reason. That enables us to dismiss what we see as an aberration, as the work of crazed fiends and psychopaths"(33-34).

For anyone so inclined, for those who long for "the good old days," wax nostalgic about the "gallantry" of the Old South, or generally feel that racial oppression "wasn't that bad," this gut-wrenching record of brutality and savage inhumanity must surely function as a show more corrective. For my part, this book came upon me, as Kafka would have it, "like ill-fortune," and I found myself both fascinated and repelled by the record of human depravity that it chronicles. It prompted me to begin reading more about the history of lynching, an interest that culminated in a research project I undertook in one of my college classes on African-American history. I can honestly say that it was one of the most difficult experiences, both intellectually and emotionally, of my academic career.

Without Sanctuary provides a photographic record of the phenomenon of lynching, reproducing 98 images, many of them from postcards made as commemorative souvenirs. In addition to the brief foreword by Congressman John Lewis, a historical overview by Litwack, and a short personal reaction by Hilton Als, the book contains explanatory notes for each of the plates, and an afterword by James Allen, the man who amassed this most disturbing collection.

The extreme savagery of lynching may surprise those who had assumed that this activity involved "mere" hanging. The ways in which the victims' bodies were mutilated, both before and after death, makes for sickening reading and viewing. The hacking off of fingers and other body parts for souvenirs reads like some ghoulish detail of a horror novel. As always, fact is stranger and stronger, than the most bizarre of fictions. The very existence of these photographs, the fact that they were taken at all, is evidence of the almost pathological depravity of those who committed these terrible crimes. Not only were they not ashamed of their deeds, they recorded them for posterity, complete with "humorous" comments about "barbeques."

The only book I can think of, that comes even close to this in its up-front and photographic depiction of human evil, is The Auschwitz Album, which reproduces photographs that the Nazis took of Hungarian Jews as they arrived at the death camp. But even these photos do not depict the actual murder of the victims, the gas chamber, and the crematorium.

There can be no doubt that this book is deeply disturbing, traumatic even, to the reader. But as has so often been observed, it is necessary to arm ourselves with information about the atrocities of the past, in order to prevent their repetition. To that end, I recommend this to everyone. As William Pickens wrote in Lynching and Debt Slavery, an ACLU report published in 1921: "To cheapen the lives of any group of men, cheapens the lives of all men, even our own. This is a law of human psychology, or human nature. And it will not be repealed by our wishes nor will it be merciful to our blindness." show less

This is a horrifying book that should be viewed by every American as a reminder of how, not long ago, the lynching of Black men (and sometimes Black women and children) was commonplace in the US, especially on the Southern US. What is almost more horrible than the pictures of the corpses is the faces of the spectators at these scenes of ritual violence. We need to never forget what was once done in the name of misguided justice and out of a belief that Blacks were hardly more than animals.

There worst book I ever read. Life changing. Where did all of that hate go? Ritual murders turned into social events for white supremacist mobs with glee in their eyes--gazing at tortured Black bodies. America will never be post-racial, too many victims need justice and collectively we keep putting off the conversation about race and white supremacy--the schizophrenic, sociopathic, genocidal idea that a lack of melanin equals superiority and gives ground to mutilate--physically, emotionally, socially--another human being whose skin is rich in melanin.

On April 12, 2000, the British writer David Irving lost a libel suit against another historian who had called him a “Holocaust Denier.” Irving had written a book claiming that the mass genocide of Jews in Germany during World War II had been a complete hoax, and that Adolf Hitler had been unfairly vilified. People in the book industry watched this trial with interest, and we were all gratified when the judge in the case called Irving a racist whose distortions of the facts were “perverse and egregious.” We all consider ourselves defenders of free speech, but also servants to truth. The books we write, read, and publish are supposed to clarify our world, not create further darkness. “Truth” is a little word that always sounds show more like it is spoken in capital letters. The truth is that the Holocaust happened. It does no good and only great evil to deny it.

Fear and denial. I sometimes think that these are the two most frightening words in the English language. Fear is what caused six million people to be massacred in Germany without protest. Denial is what we use to erase that event from history. I say “we,” because although the Holocaust is not this country’s cross to bear, we have our own history of fear and denial. There are dark periods in our past that most of us would prefer remained in darkness. The same year that a judge decided that David Irving’s book was “perverse,” one of these periods came horribly to light at the Ruth Horowitz Gallery on the Upper East Side of New York City. A one of a kind (thank god) exhibition had just been mounted. Pinned against one bare wall in the main gallery room were a series of photographs—mostly postcard sized—of people hanging from trees and bridges; the first ever display of antique lynching photographs. The exhibit made the national news as it traveled the country (although not to the extent that the original photos did, as you will see) and a book was published to accompany (I hesitate to use the word “commemorate”) the exhibition, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America.

I won’t lie to you—this is an awful book. The pictures are graphic and brutal. I am not a squeamish person by nature, but this book made me physically ill. It is the first and only book ever to have done so. In a way, the book is more difficult than the exhibition, because the reproduced photographs are so much larger than the originals—recreated with all the relentlessly accurate detail made possible by current technology and photographic restoration techniques. Without Sanctuary is a coffee table book that should never be on a coffee table. I used to keep the book on very high shelves and in the back room of my bookstore, so afraid was I to put it where children could put their hands on it.

But Without Sanctuary is also witness to the truth. Growing up as I did in New York State I always had a vague idea that lynching only occurred in the South, the actions of evil men in white hoods who murdered their victims under the cover of darkness. Not at all. The pictures in this book come from all over the country—including New York. They are often taken, not in some dark night, but on bright, sunny days. And if it is hard to look at the black men hanging from the poles or trees, it is incomprehensible to see the rows of white people standing under them, posing, proud.

The original pictures were postcard sized because that is what they were-postcards. However far across the country the 2000 exhibition traveled, the photos on display had already traveled much farther. Many of them have cheerful notes to family and friends on the back. Lynchings were public events, announced by notices posted in newspapers. It was common for people to be excused from work to attend. An essay at the beginning of the book by Leon Litwack discusses the history of lynching in America. Annotations at the end put names to the faces in the pictures, wherever the names are known. It is a photographic record of some of the worst moments in the history of the human race.

Without Sanctuary was one of those books that, as a bookseller, I felt compelled to keep in stock. Not because I thought it would sell—I didn’t expect to sell a single copy. I kept it because like most booksellers I would balance the stock between what people wanted to read, and what I wanted them to read. I didn’t exactly want anyone to read Without Sanctuary; “want” isn’t the right word for it. But I wanted people to know. I wanted people not to forget. And I wanted people to see the results of what happens when society acts out of fear and denial. I was pleased when customers would ask to see the book. In the end, I even sold one or two—to people, I suspect, like me—who couldn’t look at the horrors without feeling the compulsion to do something. Anything. Buying the book was a way to bear witness. Too little, too late, but at least these events will never be forgotten by me.

Books like Without Sanctuary are necessary because history repeats itself. Without these searing reminders of the consequences of hate, we grow complacent, lazy, and vulnerable. And lest anyone think that lynching is distant memory of a dark era, let me remind you about John William King, sentenced to death in 1999—not ten years ago—for the murder of James Byrd, Jr., who died while being dragged behind King’s pickup truck.

In our post-9/11 world, our fear and denial have become fixed upon on another culture but the results are the frighteningly similar—injustice, cruelty, and violence carried out in the name of safety and security. I don’t ever want to be one of those people standing in the photo in a book like this one. I don’t want anyone I know—anyone I’ve ever even spoken to—to be a part of such a crowd, at such an event. It is scary to live in a country ruled by fear and denial. Such a country is, well, without sanctuary if you happen to be the wrong sort of person. We have all seen the photos of smiling soldiers standing over the bodies of prisoners, so clearly we are not as far from those dark pictures in my book as we would like to think.

“Terrorist” is a word we hear often these days. But it is hard to imagine anything more terrible than these orderly rows of men and women standing under a tree by a man they have just hanged, smiling for the camera. Originally published here show less

I read about this book in a news story about the U.S. Senate issuing a formal apology for failing to pass a single anti-lynching bill during the first half of the twentieth century. Apparently the publication of the book prompted the resolution, at least in some part.

The book, as one would expect, is seriously disturbing. The editors brought together almost a hundred photographs taken of lynchings from the late nineteenth century to the civil rights era, tied together with a few essays. The images are horrible, but in some ways calm compared to the endnotes that tell the events that culminated in each lynching (when known -- in many cases, lynching was seen as such a commonplace and un-noteworthy event that little or nothing was show more recorded in the newspapers.)

One of the many things that's difficult about this book is to know exactly how to interpret this document on a personal level. I don't think white male guilt is the answer, although if you have (as I do) white southern ancestors who were around between 1880 and 1960, it's not improbable that some of them were at least complicit as bystanders. I do know that my mother's father probably averted a lynching in southern Arkansas by standing up to the Klan. That, and his pattern of helping black people and treating them like people, caused some crosses to get burned on his front yard, but no physical harm came of it; apparently one former Klansman even told him later that he'd left the Klan at that point because he felt "if they were fighting [my grandfather], they must not be doing right." So even if some of my ancestors were in some way stained by the violence of lynching -- and they probably were -- I can at least be comforted by the fact that at least one of them was notably on the right side. Of course, my relief at remembering this story and my desire to share it probably indicates some level of white guilt on my part.

Oh yeah, just so we can all be certain to assign some blame to our Southern ancestors without any direct evidence of their acceptance of the lynching culture: one of the sickest parts, to me, of the whole presentation was how many of the photographs were from postcards. It really drives home how accepted the ritualized torture and murder of blacks was, that pictures of the aftermath (complete, in many cases, with the grinning faces of the executioners) were turned into souvenirs, sold for a quarter so you could mail your loved ones: "Dear Ma, Went to the lynching today. That's me on the left. Wish you were here." (That's actually a pretty literal paraphrase of the message written on one of the postcards in the book, except for "lynching" the sender eloquently substitutes "coon barbecue".) So yeah, it really was pretty culturally pervasive.

But having said all that, I don't think white guilt is a particularly productive response. So what else can you get from it? I did find interesting the editors' point that although lynching was repeatedly upheld by its supporters as a defense against blacks' supposed sexual crimes against white women, sexual assault was a factor in only about 19% of lynching cases. The culture of lynching seemed to be a culture of fear of black aggression -- don't forget, as the editors remind us, that lynching was never undertaken by lone vigilantes, but was always a mob activity, a spectacle to reassure the participants and onlookers that no violence was so great that it could not be expunged even more violently. It fits in well with Michael Moore's grand unified theory of American fear propounded in Bowling for Columbine: fear, more than any other factor, is what will bring ordinary people to commit acts of violence.

Today, I'd say fear is the main reason that African-Americans are inordinately targets of the domesticated "violence" of the judicial system. In other words, it's not that African-Americans don't commit crimes; and some lynching victims, of course, had committed the crimes they were accused of (of course, in some cases, the crime was brushing up against a white woman in public or acting "disrespectful" to the white man trying to rip them off in the market.) But because of the fear factor, and the general idea that their actions wouldn't be punished, whites had no reservations about lynching the first black person found in the area after a crime was committed against a white person. Today, racist fear still pervades most of America, resulting in police harassment of innocent black men on top of frequently over-zealous punishment of the guilty ones. So maybe a lesson to be learned is that changing the culture of fear is a necessary step toward ending racism.

Another difficult thing about the book is that it's hard to know how to recommend or not recommend it to other people. I'm glad I read it, but it is very disturbing, and I'm not sure that most people need to read it to get the message. I'd say the best rule of thumb is probably if you think it will disturb you too much, you're probably right, and if you think it won't disturb you that much, then you absolutely need to read it, because you'll hopefully be proven wrong. show less

There were 4,742 recorded lynchings in America between 1882 and 1968, which probably comprises a small fraction of the actual total. All but 10% of the victims were black. The lynchings were sometimes announced in newspapers in advance, bringing crowds of thousands, often by special excursion trains; parents sent notes to school asking their kids be excused to attend the event. "I seen a man hanged," one apparently dissatisfied nine-year old said, "now I wish I could see one burned."
This is a brutal book. It consists of several angry essays and 98 photographs, mostly taken by professional photographers, and often made into postcards at the scene to be sold to crowds as souvenirs. The same photos once purchased to celebrate the lynching show more now condemn the smiling faces that crowd into the photographers' frame.
Most of us have seen the photos of the hanging of the Lincoln conspirators and probably even of a lynching—are these more horrible? Far more, and not simply because of the mutilated bodies. The gloating, celebratory smiles of the crowd are the real horror, underscored because the images are postcards, sold at the scene to proclaim their owners' presence, like a T-shirt saying you've been to Martha's Vineyard.

The normal purpose of a book of photographs is to inform, celebrate, record, even arouse; these images evoke emotions I have not felt since my father brought back snapshots he'd taken of emaciated bodies propped up or stacked like cordwood, when his unit freed a concentration camp at the end of World War II. Those photos were lost long ago; my father may even have thrown them away. But I can see them still. show less

The Tuskegee Institute records the lynching of 3,436 blacks between 1882 and 1950. This is probably a small percentage of these murders, which were seldom reported, and led to the creation of the NAACP in 1909, an organization dedicated to passing federal anti-lynching laws. Through all this terror and carnage someone-many times a professional photographer-carried a camera and took pictures of the events. These lynching photographs were often made into postcards and sold as souvenirs to the crowds in attendance. These images are some of photography's most brutal, surviving to this day so that we may now look back on the terrorism unleashed on America's African-American community and perhaps know our history and ourselves better. The show more almost one hundred images reproduced here are a testament to the camera's ability to make us remember what we often choose to forget. show less