Photographs bear witness to our lynching history

There was a time in America, not all that long ago, when nothing entertained quite as much as a lynching.

It was big business to manufacture postcards of "the events." People sent them to their relatives and friends with inscriptions like: "Wish you were here" and "You missed a good time."

Spectators even scavenged for souvenirs. "Ashes, bone fragments, a finger. . . . It's hard to imagine that's what actually happened," says Theresa Napson-Williams, a graduate fellow at Rutgers' Institute for Research on Women.

But it did. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, lynchings - mostly of African Americans, but also people of other ethnic groups - were a common practice and often cause for public celebrations.

Napson-Williams, a doctoral candidate in history who has received a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Grant in Women's Studies, is researching violence against African-American women in the 20th century and, more specifically, the little-known practice of lynching black women.

It is an untold story behind a tragic chapter in American history.

"I've always been interested in African-American history," said the Pennsylvania resident, who is black. "I read about black women being raped or lynched, and I wanted to find out more. I had known black men were lynched for raping white women or killing someone white, and that the incidents usually didn't happen the way they were portrayed."

Her research, covering the period between 1920 to 1950, is based on court records, police investigations, newspaper accounts, personal papers of black leaders and books.

"African Americans were often lynched not for committing crimes, but for `offenses' like standing up to white people, having businesses that threatened whites economically, or trying to vote and assert themselves politically," she said.

They could also be lynched after something as simple as being spotted walking along a lonely road and encountering a group of whites, she said. The group would typically start out by verbally harassing the victim, then the torment would lead to the victim's torture or death. Charges of serious crimes might be invented to justify the lynchings, and sometimes victims would be costumed after they were killed to mock them, according to Napson-Williams.

"A lot of people think lynchings just happened to black men," Napson-Williams said. But a photography exhibit at the New-York Historical Society shows that black women, as well as people of Italian, Jewish and Chinese heritage, were also targeted for lynchings.

Lynchings mostly involved hanging, but especially for blacks they could include being burned alive, beaten, tortured and mutilated. The only area where lynching never occurred is New England.

"They were very creative," Napson-Williams said. "And you (the victim) could be a young teen-ager 13 or 14, or an older woman in your 40s who was a wife and mother. The women who were lynched weren't documented like the men, so there may have been more women lynched than we know."

The exhibit is composed of photographs from the recently published book, "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America" (Twin Palms Publishers, $60). Hangings done in the South between 1890 and 1930 are documented through postcards and other pictures collected by Atlanta residents James Allen and John Littlefield.

The images show white men, women and children as part of the lynch mobs, which could swell to 15,000 people. Many lynchings were advertised in advance, and it was common for participants to not only make them family outings, but to proudly pose for pictures with the victims.

A caption on one photo of a lynching involving the burning of the victim reads: "This is the barbecue we had last night."

Allen and Littlefield, both white, claim their collection of 130 images of lynchings is the largest in the world. Allen calls himself a "Southern Picker." He drives the back roads of the South in his van, canvassing estate sales and homes for American furniture, pottery and African-American objects and photographs. He has paid as little as $5 and as much as $30,000 for lynching images.

Allen and Littlefield purchased the photographs from whites representing all walks of life. Allen said some of the lynching images they bought were openly displayed in homes, while others were squirreled away.

"A lot we bought from photography or postcard collectors who found them 20 to 30 years ago," he said. "There are big postcard collectors all over the country, and there have been for decades. Some collect them (postcards of lynchings) because they're rare, they're such an oddity. Others collect them as part of the history of a particular region, like Georgia.

"Some we got right out of family photo albums," Allen said. "Some would be right in there with the (family's) Daytona Beach trip."

One photograph was purchased from a farmer in Texas who kept it in a coffee can in a shed at the back of his house. "I have yet to find any in African-American homes," Allen added.

Most of the people who committed lynchings were never punished, and between 1890 and 1917 - when the highest concentration of American lynchings took place - lynching photographers opened studios in every major Southern town. Even lynching stereoscopes were made, providing a 3-D effect, and newspaper photographers were known to hurry mobs to finish their acts so the photographers could meet their deadlines.

Allen and Littlefield's photographs show that lynching was allowed to exist - and to such an extent - because it was "community-sanctioned."

"The church, business leaders, the judicial system, all had to condone this. It helps to realize there are parallels in today's society," Allen said.

The last reported lynching in the United States occurred in 1968. Most states adopted laws to end lynchings after public opinion shifted against acceptance of the practice.