Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America
by Jon Lewis, Leon F. Litwack, Hilton Als

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Book Reviews of Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America

Book Review: A damning indictment of mob lawlessness.
Summary: 4 Stars

... Hundreds of kodaks (sic) clicked all morning at the scene of the lynching. People in automobiles and carriages came from miles around to view the corpse dangling from the end of a rope. ...Picture card photographers installed a portable printing plant at the bridge and reaped a harvest in selling postcards showing a photo of the lynched Negro. Women and children were there by the score. At a number of country schools the days routine was delayed until boy and girl pupils could get back from viewing the lynched man. ...

Sadly, far from remaining in the pages of American history this appalling behaviour still lurks within the darker reaches of the human psyche throughout the world, surfacing all too often to shock us.

It would seem appropriate to let the last word be that of an innocent victim. In the classic examination of mob lawlessness, The Ox-Bow Incident, Henry Fonda as Gil Carter, one of the lynch mob, reads aloud at the close of the film from a letter written by one of the lynched men.

... A man just naturally cant take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurtin everybody in the world, cause then hes just not breaking one law but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. Its everything people have ever found out about justice and whats right and wrong. Its the very conscience of humanity. There cant be any such thing as civilisation unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? ...

Without Sanctuary is a powerful piece of work and an excellent reference volume.

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