SHOW: MORNING EDITION (11:00 AM on ET)
April 4, 2000, Tuesday
HEADLINE: LYNCHING PHOTOGRAPHS ON DISPLAY AT NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
ANCHORS: BOB EDWARDS
REPORTERS: ANTHEA RAYMOND
BODY:
BOB EDWARDS, host:
Nearly 5,000 lynchings are thought to have been carried out in the United
States between 1882 and 1968. Some lynchings targeted women but most were
aimed at black men. For many Americans, it's difficult to visualize what
happened and who took part. But there's a new book titled "Without
Sanctuary" and a related exhibit. From New York City, Anthea Raymond
reports.
ANTHEA RAYMOND reporting:
James Allen and his partner, John Littlefield, own 130 images of lynchings
and their victims. They say it's the largest collection in the world. Allen
found these images of hangings, burnings and beatings the same way he does
the rest of his merchandise. Allen is a second-hand dealer. His business
card reads 'Southern Picker(ph), American furniture, pottery,
African-American objects and photos.' He drives Southern back roads in his
van, stopping at estate sales and people's homes. Allen's paid anywhere from
$ 15 to $ 30,000 for the lynching images. But unlike everything else he
buys, Allen won't sell these.
Mr. JAMES ALLEN: One of the most stunning lynchings in the country was Jess
Washington(ph), who was a 17-year-old boy in Robinson, Texas. He was taken
to court and the second he was found guilty, which was after he had no
defense attorney present, the mob rushed in and grabbed him from the court
authorities, took him out into the street and beat him--hit him with shovels
and bricks.
RAYMOND: Allen says 15,000 people turned out to see Jess Washington die. He
thinks his photos were taken from the window of the mayor's office that
overlooked the square where Washington was chained to a tree and burned
alive.
Mr. ALLEN: There's a man with a rod who is keeping Jess Washington on top of
the flames and then there is another man who has a glove on like you would
use at a barbecue pit, and he's holding onto the chain because it's hot,
raising and lowering, and this--Jess is still alive in this picture. So it's
very rare to find an image where the torture is actually taking place.
RAYMOND: Surrounding Jess and his torturers, a sea of well-dressed men in
hats. They're pulling closer to see what's going on. But somehow they seem
to look up at the camera, too. Allen bought the photo from a man in Texas
who pulled it out of a coffee can hidden in the shed behind his house.
Mass-produced photos and postcards of lynchings often circulated afterwards.
People mailed them to one another and posted them in scrapbooks and on the
walls.
Mr. ALLEN: The photos were sold, many times, on the street. The postcards
were available in drugstores and grocery stores. One image we have, the
photographer went door to door, sold them to the citizens of the community.
The 1919 lynching in Omaha, Nebraska, that we have was purchased by a man
who was traveling through town as a tourist item for $ 2.
RAYMOND: This year, Allen and Littlefield took their photos to New York City
for a small show at a gallery in Manhattan. Hundreds of people a day were
turned away but some critics complained that the show's lack of context gave
it more shock than educational value. So when the New York Historical
Society invited them to remount the show, multimedia displays, description
and information about the nation's anti-lynching movement were added.
Facilitators also lead discussions on weekends. Shatucki Cooper(ph) from
Brooklyn's Ittafaya Cultural Center(ph) attended the discussion and said it
helped her understand that children attended lynchings, too.
Ms. SHATUCKI COOPER (Brooklyn's Ittafaya Cultural Center): Lynchings were
celebrated like a birthday party, or someone giving birth or, you know, it
was like a happy occasion. On one of the postcards it says, 'This is a
barbecue.' You know, barbecues are associated with family events and, you
know, bringing people together, and it's a shame for me to see how that was
depicted.
Mr. LEON LITWACK (UC-Berkeley Historian): What is most dramatic and most
revealing are the faces of the spectators.
RAYMOND: Leon Litwack, a UC-Berkeley historian, has written a book about
Southern Reconstruction.
Mr. LITWACK: The faces of the white men, women and children who are
participants in, and observers of, this ritual--that is, lynchings really
were turned into a kind of community ritual in this period.
RAYMOND: He says lynching photos invariably include images of the crowd.
Mr. LITWACK: So what you may look at may seem like the very depths of
barbarism, that's beyond the realm of any reason, but I think that would be
a very dangerous assumption because what you come to realize is that this
was not the work, this was not the outburst of crazed fiends, but rather the
triumph of an ideology.
RAYMOND: The ideology that Litwack is talking about is racism. He says it
was sanctioned by churches, by legal institutions, and by an economic system
that needed the myth of the dangerous or incompetent black, and a mechanism
to perpetrate that stereotype. Emma Coleman Jordan, a Georgetown University
law professor who's writing a book about lynching, says the photos and the
events they document are an important step in renegotiating American
identity.
Professor EMMA COLEMAN JORDAN (George University Law Professor): So the
pictures invite us to wonder, how did this happen? Could it happen again?
What's the difference between me and this person? What happened to those
members of the mob, of the crowd? How could they absorb this? What did they
do with this experience? How did they participate in America after this
experience?
RAYMOND: Collectors James Allen and John Littlefield see the photos as their
way to participate in America and its discussion on race. Allen's book of
photos, entitled "Without Sanctuary," has just been published. The exhibit
is at the New York Historical Society through the middle of the summer and
may travel. For NPR News, I'm Anthea Raymond in New York.