Customer Reviews

Lynching Photographs (Defining Moments in American Photography)

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One thing that has managed to avoid the standard history books of the United States is the way that African Americans were denied basic human rights from the end of slavery times until federal legislation finally was passed by the congress during the Lyndon Johnson administration. My parents lived during this difficult time, and they always knew that "lynching" of fellow African Americans was a very real "current" event to them, that would occur, mainly in the south, or would occur to their relatives if, for whatever reason, the local white community determined that they deserved to be tortured and murdered without the due process of law. One of my neighbors, Emett Till, a 14 year old boy from Chicago, while visiting relatives in Money Mississippi, was "lynched" by a group of white men in 1955, when he was perceived as a "threat" to the local white community. These men who did the lynching were tried by an all white jury and never convicted of their crimes, and had the nerve to boast about what they did (torture and lynch) this teenager days later in the national media. To this day, none of these murderers have spent any time in jail. So, it would benifit all of us if the practice of lynching in the United States were be part of standard American high school teaching. This book, along with the book "Without Sanctuary", must be part of "standard" high school education in the United States.

I collect macabre coffee table books. For instance, I have "An Exquisite Corpse" which is about the Black Dahlia murder. I enjoy reading things like this, but they are for my front table.
I wanted to buy "Without Sanctuary" but thought I would buy something less expensive first. I liked what I saw, but for a book called "Lynching Photographs," there were few photos. It's informative enough, but I expected a more visual experience.

Yeah, well, how many books could there be about this topic? Morbidly fascinating. Nothing like having a well-rounded library, Dewey.