Lynching and US History

1 Ly nching and« US Hist ory 5 Robert L. Har r is, Jr. This is a very important conference and topic that is being considered. I want to respond initially to a question that Salah Hassan raised in regard to Abu Ghraib, and I will paraphrase H. Rap Brown: "Violence is as American as apple pie." That is one of the reasons why people have not been that much outraged about Abu Ghraib, just as they were not that outraged about lynching, or about these photographs that were used in antilynching campaigns. As pointed out, especially in Bridget Cooks's paper, the United States has yet to pass a law against lynching. So, there was no outrage about lynching, and that is just in line with the situation in Abu Ghraib. There are a couple of points that I would like to make: one in relationship to Bridget Cooks's paper, and the other one will be in relationship to Leigh Raiford's paper. First of all, something that came to mind as I was reading Bridget Cooks's paper was the discomfort that she mentioned while she was viewing Without Sanctuary in Atlanta, and how individuals who were viewing the photographs did not make eye contact with each other. They really were not speaking with each other. She indicated a sense of vulnerability and awkwardness in viewing the photographs , especially in a room crowded with strangers. This suggests to me the discomfort that people feel in talking about the whole issue of race in this country. These photographs provide us with an opportunity to talk about race. Race is a subject that is on many people's minds in this country, but it is one of the most avoided subjects . People just do not talk about race, and do not talk honestly with each other about issues of race. I was glad to hear Walter Cohen reference the textbooks , one at the elementary school and one at the secondary school level, because there is a question of how lynching is conveyed as a part of United States history. Yet, we are not getting, from the examples that he gave, the full context for understanding lynching. Also, I think that lynching is seen as something that occurred in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. It is something that is behind us. It is over. It is done. This perspective does not consider lynching, and especially violence against African Americans, as part of a continuum from the period of enslavement to the beating of Rodney King and the murder of Amadou Diallo. This violence, in many respects, is part of a continuum , and it is one that we have really not faced up to in the United States. I wonder why these photographs , as they were shown in different venues around the country, were basically shown in black venues in the South. Maybe I missed something, but from what I have seen, they were displayed at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Site and at Jackson State University, both black venues. So, we have in many respects, a sectional divide that continues to exist in this country. I would be very interested in the response to the exhibition of the photo130 * Nka Journal of Cont em porary African Art graphs at the New York Historical Society and at the Chicago Historical Society, predominantly white venues in the North. Joel Kovel, in White Racism: A Psychohistory, talks about the difference between the North and the South.1 There is adversive racism in the North, as whites have tried to avoid African Americans, but dominative racism in the South, where whites have sought to keep African Americans in their place. It would be interesting to know a little bit more about how this display played out in the different sections of the country and the extent to which the audiences followed the pattern of aversive and dominative racism. It seems to me that lynching has come to be identified almost exclusively with African Americans, whereas we know that there were whites who have been lynched in the United States. But as we look at lynching—if we look at...