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Notes
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Notes Introduction: Whose Evidence? Which Account? 1. Disagreements abound regarding how many blacks died by lynching, and I do not insist that my numbers are more accurate than anyone else’s. Numbers seem less significant for the period I study because the violence reverberated through photography. For lynching history and statistics, see Tolnay and Beck; Brundage; White; Dray. For why statistics vary, see Waldrep. 2. Lynching plays are still written today, but this study focuses on those that emerged before 1930, pinpointing the period that historians agree constituted the height of mob violence. My goal is to understand how blacks—those who lived and wrote with the form of lynching represented in the photographs in Without Sanctuary (Allen et al.)—survived the violence and its implications. To my knowledge, there is only one extant, pre-1930 lynching play not examined here: Garland Anderson’s Appearances. As mentioned in chapter 6, that play stands outside the tradition I trace, given its lack of interest in how lynching affects the black family. Set inside a hotel and insisting that a black man’s innocence will save him, this script promotes the author’s beliefs in Christian Science more than it enters a critical discourse on racial violence. I should also note that the present study includes a text that most have not considered a lynching play: Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Blue Blood. As I explain in chapter 5, I engage it because the action is predicated on the threat of lynching; it thereby fits Perkins and Stephens’s generic parameters. 3. See Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume I, especially 94 and 95. These ideas have been widely influential; my thinking is shaped by how they figure in the theories of Stuart Hall and Hazel Carby. 4. The tendency to read texts that expose injustice, especially by black authors, as “protest”may have begun with James Baldwin’s critique of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which transitioned into criticism of Richard Wright’s Native Son. However, Baldwin’s critique would not apply to lynching drama. For Baldwin, Stowe’s work falls short because “sentimentality . . . is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel” (12). Therefore, Stowe’s novel is “a catalogue of violence” that focuses on atrocities rather than “what moved her people to such deeds” (12). Lynching plays do not generally focus on physical violence; they are attempts to understand and overcome it. Baldwin’s critique of Wright takes many forms, but his main issue is that Bigger Thomas accepts society’s judgment so that he is “defined by his hatred and his fear” (18). Ultimately, “the failure of the protest novel lies in its rejection of life,” the insistence that only “categorization” is real and “cannot be transcended” (18). Lynching plays do not concede to mainstream categorizations of African Americans. 5. Blacks are not the only lynch victims depicted, but they were often mutilated. The nonblacks killed by mobs were usually covered, not naked, and they were not typically castrated and burned beyond recognition. 6. Virtual exhibition located at www.withoutsanctuary.org. The Senate passed Resolution 39 on June 13, 2005. Full text of the apology on the sponsoring senator’s website: http://landrieu.senate.gov/lynching/index.cfm. 7. The song was written by Lewis Allan (Abel Meeropol) but was made famous when Billie Holiday lent her voice to it in 1939, ultimately inspiring numerous renditions. See Margolick. 8. Many have visited exhibitions of the photographs, making for another embodied practice that intensifies their effect. The photographs were first displayed at the Roth Horowitz Gallery in New York City as Witness in January/February 2000 but proved too popular for this intimate space. A larger selection of images arrived at the New York Historical Society on March 14, 2000. Originally scheduled through July, the exhibition’s run was extended several times, amounting to a stay of nearly seven months. Next, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh scheduled its display for September 22 through December 31, 2001, but extended it to January 15, 2002.The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Site in Atlanta presented a selection of photographs from May 1 to December 31, 2002. This run was complemented by an international academic conference titled “Lynching and Racial Violence in America: Histories and Legacies” at Emory University, October 3–6, 2002. Curators of the Atlanta exhibition used dimmed lighting and somber music to encourage contemplation. A similarly thoughtful exhibition was mounted in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the National Underground...