Friday, December 03, 2004

Without Sanctuary: Artifacts of Lynching in America

James Allen's documentation of this dark, repressed side of America is an important reminder of the extent of racialized violence in our country. It was first a traveling exhibit, then a book, and later was an online site, unfortunately it has been removed from the website. I say unfortunate because it was a tool for learning and confronting this past--one cannot comprehend the racialized violence of lynching until they look into the laughing, smiling celebrating faces surrounding a horribly disfigured and slaughtered human being (even as reproductions of photographs on a website the horror of these pictures still remain with me today). We so easily typify the evil of genocides in other countries while ignoring our own crimes against humanity (if anyone is unsure why we should remember these acts, please ask and I will reply):

My Original Post on Without Sanctuary

NPR: Report on Without Sanctuary Exhibit

CNN: Exhibit of Photos Displays Racial Hatred

Bad Subjects Review of the Book

Art Review When It First Toured the Nation

Village Voice Review of the Book

Facing History and Ourselves

American Lynching (Documentary)

Strange Fruit, Jazz and Civil Rights

2 comments:

Susannity said...

Those photos do stay with you. Haunting, as they should be. What is also haunting is that there is still much racism in this country, and if you are white person reading this, don't think I mean you against people of color. I've seen all colors do it, even against their own color.

Michael said...

Yes, and so much more... where do we begin.