Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America

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Most of them were taken by professional photographers immediately or a short while after the lynching, sometimes during. In 1996, a New York Times photographer visited Allen and took stories of the collection back to New York. Those images are so much more powerful postcard-size than anything they can throw up on a wall,” Allen said. I was not totally ignorant of the lynching phenomenon in the United States, as my parents and grandparents told me all about it from the time I was young (and yes, they were all opposed to it. The photographs that go on view tomorrow at Roth Horowitz, a gallery on the Upper East Side, may never fit comfortably in the history of art, or for that matter, of photography.

The memory of lynching brings America face to face with "our problematic history with due process and the rule of law," said William Kornblum, sociologist at the City University of New York's graduate school, "Even today we can't face part of it. Leon Litwack (1929-2021) was a professor of American History at the University of California in Berkeley from 1964 to 2007.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.

As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, he was one of the "Big Six" civil rights leaders who coordinated the March on Washington. Get some friends and put together a discussion group around the reading, and bring lots of napkins, and expect surprises - especially when viewing the photos. 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. Just a terrible, tragic history that needs to be exposed so we can be reminded of what we do when our community approves of our monstrous behaviors.In a climate where lynching was an acceptable expression of the hatred of a more-powerful community against a less-powerful one, viewing lynchings became another fun family activity, a festival of hate. a question even more relevant today as anyone can be a witness (whether you want to or not) to brutality and murder via the internet. 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. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH).