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.