Book With Pictures Of Lynchings

A book featuring lynching photographs from america brings home a reality we cannot ignore allowing us to view lynching from a distance without sanctuary makes us realise our own complicity.

Book with pictures of lynchings. With essays by hilton als leon litwack congressman john lewis and james allen these photographs have been published as a book without sanctuary by twin palms publishers. Searching through america s past for the last 25 years collector james allen uncovered an extraordinary visual legacy. In this book the art historian dora apel and the american studies scholar shawn michelle smith examine lynching photographs as a way of analyzing photography s historical role in promoting and resisting racial violence.

Both are necessary to better understand what happened back then. In many communities it was a public event to be witnessed recorded and made available by means of photographs. The photographs of lynchings in james allen s book documents historical atrocities.

While this picture of lynching tells a distressingly familiar story about mob violence in america it is not the full story. Yet this is the only book known to me to collect these images in such a large apparently well researched collection. Photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout america.

Both are significant old historical books. Far more than a new addition to an encyclopedia of the southern gothic without sanctuary stands alone as a chronicle of shame and tragedy one that controverts the received wisdom that most southern lynchings were the sole work of the disgruntled white trash comprising the ku klux klan. The facts of lynching should not be news to an educated american of any age.

A picture can often be worth a thousand words.