One probable victim of the Klan was seized for wearing a silk top hat; perhaps he’d ignored a lynching postcard left at his home, its obverse reading “Warning//The answer of the Anglo-Saxon race to black brutes who would attack the Womanhood of the South”—a phrasing that suggests an additional twist to what we normally term Gothic. Rather, I find that what this books shows through its keyhole is that men can be made ill and evil by their individual and communal beliefs, by their thoughtless brutalities.

Allen for bringing these postcards and photos to our faces, so that this pornography of evil, stupidity, self-righteousness and barbarism can be seen for what it was, what it is, and what it still might be, so we can say "Never Again" to this Holocaust too. In terms of being thought provoking, this books is a "5", but I can't "like" this chronicle of abomination. But later, she reflected on the experience, and in particular, the context in which we encounter the photographs in the "Without Sanctuary" book.C., on June 13 at a news conference with Senate sponsors of the resolution as well as survivors and family members of lynching victims. Just a terrible, tragic history that needs to be exposed so we can be reminded of what we do when our community approves of our monstrous behaviors. In a recent interview, Hinshaw said she believes the proper way to encounter the photos is in a public exhibit — a position Allen shares.

The first lynching photo Allen saw, sometime around 1982, was a postcard-sized image of Leo Frank, wrongfully convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker in the Atlanta pencil factory Frank operated. One of the photographs depicts my known family ancestor, so I wrapped my arms around him and thanked him for his life, for his contributions, for the smiles he must’ve given his beloveds. This is a book I'd rather didn't exist in that it documents with a clear eye the monstrous torture of black Americans by white Americans through lynching, burning, stabbing, and mutilating, all done with great cheer and vigor, with family and friends, church members and community stalwarts, grinning as the camera focuses on their deeds and their whole-hearted approval. The next time you hear a white person tell a person of color"It happened a long time ago, just get over it", show them this book.Repentance and reconciliation is the believer's hope; so good that nothing is too big for a crucified and risen again Christ and his genuine people. Allen, editor of Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Twin Palms Publishers), talked about the June 13, 2005, Senate resolution apologizing for the Senate’s failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation and about his book on the history of lynching in the U. If anyone could possibly become numb to the almost-unspeakably violent images, it’s Allen, who compiled his work into “Without Sanctuary,” a traveling exhibit and later a book that brought lynching and lynching photography into the public consciousness in a way it never been had before. Ordinary people, ordinary children, ordinary crowds, ordinary postcards, but when we look back at them now, they have the power to, as Allen says, “turn the living to pillars of salt.