Without Sanctuary [Hardcover]

There are no adjectives that do justice to the depravity that is documented in this book. No book I have read has been more disturbing to read or comment upon. The reason is the proximity in time and place of these events of pure evil.

Twenty-three States, one shy of 50% of the Continental United States, are represented in this book. Many of the States not involved are sparsely populated to this day. To say this genocide/holocaust was pervasive is more than reasonable. I use holocaust in its literal meaning of "wholly consumed by fire". I note the difference, as the events in Nazi Germany did not take place here. The burning of human victims on the soil of The United States has its own distinctive horror, which must be acknowledged as part of our History.

The word History often implies a buffer of time; a space to distance ourselves from what some would like to forget. I have read, "Blacks should get over it". This is generally a claim that all this sadism ended with Lincoln. It is true that "only" 75% of the lynching in the book are of "Blacks", but as the number of lynchings decreased the percentage rose to 90%. This book shows a lynching from the 1960's, NOT the 1860's. If the authors chose to include other photos, the murder by dragging in Texas of a "Black" man would bring us if not literally to today, then a number of years so low in single digits, recounting it as a number of months ago may be more reasonable.

The other vacuous defense I have noted is, "I, my Family, my Grandparents, never did own slaves", and so on. And so what? What is documented in this book is less prevalent today because you will likely be caught and jailed/executed, because the world is watching, and now we care what others think. Do people suppose the basic nature of those that did or watched these acts, many of who are alive today has changed? Change doesn't happen in 40 years. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to sign anti-lynching legislation, while one million black soldiers fought for what this Country is supposed to represent, he sent a message not just about losing the Southern vote for his Presidency, but a much wider apathy.

The sport of lynching attracted huge crowds. Special trains would bring entire Families to watch. One murder and mutilation was witnessed by 15,000 people. One 9 year old who could easily be alive today, and if so I truly hope is sane and was only an unwilling victim of Parents stated "I have seen a man hanged" he told his Mother "now I wish I could see one burned".

What the book did not mention, and what would be devastating if done, is if the press chose to track down the participants and or the viewers. The photographs are there, the companies that made the postcards are probably gone, but the postcards were addressed. Some of the deviants of our species highlighted their faces when sending the cards to friends and Family.

What would that exposure accomplish, for what is in those pictures is part of all of us, it is our nature. We are the only species that tortures its own for pleasure and amusement. From the text;

"What was strikingly new and different in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the sadism and exhibitionism that characterized white violence. To kill the victim was not enough; the execution became public theater, a participatory ritual of torture and death, a voyeuristic spectacle prolonged as long as possible (once for 7 hours) for the benefit of the crowd".

And it gets worse, parts of victims displayed in store windows, the scramble for body parts as mementos. Piece of human bone on a watch chain perhaps? And if you can imagine, there is even more.

To this day our President can say nothing in terms of an official apology. Were he to do so the subject of reparations would arise, and that would be inconvenient now wouldn't it?
Mr. Randall Robinson wrote "The Debt, What America Owes To Blacks" that I believe would interest those who have read this work. The book "The Unsteady March: The Rise And Decline of Racial Equality in America" by Philip A. Klinkner and Rogers M. Smith, also makes excellent reading.

Until we acknowledge as a people and as a Government, what happened in this Country for centuries, this book will be just that, a book. There will someday be a people capable of living in a Democracy and not abusing what it offers. If that Nation of People exists I have yet to read of them.

Germany took responsibility for its crimes, why can't we. Why do we suffer as allies the Nation of Turkey that slaughtered Armenians by the millions, and to this day denied it happened?

The letter the man wrote below to his Children is beautiful. I wish I could agree with the thought that if we know our History we will not repeat it. We know what we have done, the style changes, but we as a people do not. We as a Nation do not require it of other Countries when we are arguably at our most influential. Not our business? Nonsense! Put our house in order, and if others desire our friendship, require the same. If we do not, History will repeat like the Seasons.

Without Sanctuary is a damning indictment of mob violence. It illuminates one of the darkest periods in American history through a collection of photographs and picture postcards depicting lynchings; whites lynching whites, blacks lynching blacks, but mostly whites lynching blacks. And, as if mere lynching was not enough, the victims were more often than not obliged to endure ritual humiliation and horrific mutilation before an audience of ghoulish, gawping onlookers.

... 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.

This is a horrible book - what it shows us is ghastly. But what it shows us is ourselves. In the western world we like to think we are civilized, that we have left behind the horrors of the middles ages and before, that we are somehow different now. But look at these photographs and know that we have not changed. This is not "only" lynching by hanging, but also by burning alive and other vile tortures. And many of the perpetrators are supported by large crowds, including women and children, laughing and joking. And these are people who would have called themselves Christian. The photographs are hard enough to look at, but try to imagine the reality and the awful predicament of the victims.

It is a sobering reminder that without obedience to the rule of law we are all too quickly faced with the grisly obscenities of mob rule. We have seen it in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia and elsewhere but this grim photographic record should tell us that we cannot pretend that we are more civilized than those foreign peoples because we are modern westerners, any more than the mere passage of time distinguishes us from the brutal executioners in these photographs.