Book With Pictures Of Lynchings

A picture can often be worth a thousand words.

Book with pictures of lynchings. 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. Both are necessary to better understand what happened back then. Both are significant old historical books.

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. The facts of lynching should not be news to an educated american of any age.

Although ginzburg s book of newspaper articles and editorials describe hundreds of lynchings in explicit detail the power of an image can not be discounted. Pictures such as these may be found in most any history of civil rights book. Lynching in america presents the most comprehensive portrait of lynching.

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

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.