Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America | 
 enlarge | Authors: Jon Lewis, Leon F. Litwack, Hilton Als
Creator: James Allen
Publisher: Twin Palms Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $60.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  48 reviews
Sales Rank: 47051
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 209
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 10.4 x 7.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0944092691
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.134
EAN: 9780944092699
ASIN: 0944092691
Publication Date: February 1, 2000
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| Customer Reviews: Read 43 more reviews...
without sanctuary May 29, 2008
As a white man over sixty, growing up in the Northeast, I was sheltered from the realities of racism by my surroundings. "Colored people" were simply not socially acceptable, thats all.
When you go through this book you will cringe and shutter. What reason and why would white people do this. Not only lynch but torture and maim before they allowed the subject to die, and often for no reason - just because it was Saturday night and people needed something to do. Truly a wakeup call for white America to reflect on what we were and really how far have we come.
Buy this book !
Z
Healing from the hurts of racism May 25, 2008
This an extraordinary book.
My father, who was a civil rights activist, wore a button for years that said, "I read banned books." When he died, we made a bookmark with his photo on it wearing that button. When I read Without Sanctuary I used that bookmark. Living here in New York City I often ride the trains, and I like to read during these trips. I decided to take the cover off this book because I was worried about children and anyone else who was not ready to see these photos getting a glimpse of them. But I've talked to my friends at work, and I've even given them peeks of this book because I want so much for people to know about the period of our national history during which lynching occurred. Few people can stand to look.
I once went to a workshop for learning how to undo the effects of racism, which was mostly for people of color. I asked the workshop leader, "What can we white folks do to end our own racism?" He answered, "Put your face into the buzz-saw of racism, and hold it there until you heal." I am still, many years later, trying to follow that suggestion, and buying this book was part of my journey as a white person in acknowledging the racist legacy I inherited growing up in the US. Without Sanctuary puts your face into the ways that white society tried to terrorize and silence a large number of US citizens.
My family immigrated from Lithuania and other countries in Eastern Europe around the turn of the 1900s. As Jewish immigrants, many of them felt that they had nothing to do with slavery, and they certainly had their own problems coming here. My grandfather participated in union organizing with other Jewish workers, and my father turned towards the problems of poverty and racism in our city during the 1960s until his recent death. But I still feel we as a white family benefit from centuries of free labor in the US. The hard fact is, that as white immigrants we bought into the racist system that supported a middle class, or at least the intellectual lifestyle. Today I work as a public school teacher in the housing projects of Brooklyn, but I own my own house and I enjoy a middle class income.
Without Sanctuary reveals and reminds of us of that period following emancipation when white citizens still stood to gain economically by the silence and passivity of African American communities. That period, more than any other period of our history, conditioned us, under heavy terror, to accept the separation caused by so many years of slavery. Without Sanctuary is one of my buzz-saws, and I cherish it. And although no one I know can stand to look at it with me (yet), it is a healing device, because without understanding there cannot be reconciliation. Without pain there cannot be recovery. We as a people must face and feel our own history so that we can move forward to a world without racism.
The question you need to ask yourself before buying this book is, "Am I ready to heal?"
Thank you, to the folks who put together Without Sanctuary.
Stunning, both inside and out May 16, 2008
There are other books of lynching photographs, including LYNCHING PHOTOGRAPHS by Apel and Smith, which I used for a class in African-American History. But, while the Apel and Smith book is more cost effective, it lacks the appeal and power of WITHOUT SANCTUARY. For a book that calls itself LYNCHING PHOTOGRAPHS, it was remarkably sparse on actual photographs and very high in narrative and artistic evaluation. That is not the case with this book. It is stunning, both inside and out. It is stimulating to the senses--incredibly stylistic and made with high quality materials, as well as filled with large and incredibly powerful visual images and powerful source material. It is a book that is very hard to read because of the heartwrenching images, but impossible to put down. I plan to use this book in my future classes.
Haunting and dispicable February 22, 2008
It's not a pretty job, but someone had to make this book. This history, though despicable, should not be hidden any more than the Jewish Holocaust should be. Germans need(ed) to face their history and as a white person I can say American whites need to do so too.
Essential American history December 3, 2007
One gropes for words -- and many adjectives such as "horrific", "vile", and "gruesome" spring to mind -- but ultimately words fall far short. Which is why this collection of 98 photographs of lynchings that occurred throughout the United States (not just the South) is so important. Many but not all were the product of racism. All reflect a mob inhumanity and cruelty that boggles the mind and rends the soul. Although not on the same massive scale as the Nazi treatment of the Jews, this nation's lynching history, as graphically documented in this book, is equally disturbing. (How does one "rank" such atrocities anyway?) And what makes this even more sickening was that so many of these executions were public spectacles, community functions that were commemorated and celebrated with post cards and other commercial ephemera and even mementos from the victims' bodies.
Although not cheap ($41.16 at Amazon), WITHOUT SANCTUARY should be in every general public library in the United States, and at some point before graduation from high school every student should somehow be exposed to it, alongside the standard pronouncements of our nation's high and noble ideals (the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, etc.).
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