Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynchings in America

[CrimsonTide4]

Originally posted by straightBOS

Bebe Moore Campbell's "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine" takes a look at this by reworking the Emmitt Till case through her characters, it was a good read.

That is one of my most favorite books. She took that death to a whole other level. You were able to experience it from several different points of view. What was most interesting to me was the weakness of the man whose wife was the "object" of Armstrong's words. Floyd (went and got my book) was the low man on the totem pole not just in his community but in his family but when he did what he did, his "worth" rose a couple of notches for a little while in the eyes of his family and the white community.

This is a book that is a must read by everyone.

[bluz4]

i just read that book actually. and it was a POWERFUL read. if any of you get a chance, you should read All God's Children. That book is about so many things: violence, racism, poverty, mental illness.. all in the black community. but one thing that it does address is why blacks were lynched. and it said that many whites feared that blacks were getting too rich, gaining too much land, and pretty much moving to their level on the economic pole. so to keep blacks in check and to keep their poor and inferior, whites would lynch them. i'm not saying it wasn't about white women at times and their claims that black men were preying on them. but many times it was just to keep blacks from gaining power and money and land.

[Little32]

I went to the site, I could not make it through seven pictures. I will never be able to understnad how people could justify doing something like that. It really makes me wonder what kind of person you would have to be to take part in a lynching, to picnic at a lynching, to take your children to watch that mess. It really makes me wonder and despair just a little for those kinds of people. At the same time, it is something I never hope to understand, becasue to understand would require some sort of degeneration on my part.