There are children too, brought to the lynching by a schoolteacher, let out of class early to learn a lesson. I close my eyes and see these postcards being passed from hand to hand, like trading cards, or threats. The Tuskegee Institute records the reported lynching of 4,742 blacks between 1882 and 1968, no doubt a small percentage of the actual murders systematically committed. Residents of nearby hamlets would bring picnic baskets, gossip with neighbors over harvests, weddings and births as black bodies swing overhead. Life magazine published this picture.
Somebody do something .
In a series of anguished questions, moving nervously from plea to demand, Williams implicates not only the act of lynching but also the act of photographing the violence. So doing, I'm feeding, somewhat, into what the essayist George W.S. Trow called 'white euphoria,' which is defined by white people exercising their largesse in my face as they say, Tell me about yourself, meaning, Tell me how you've suffered. This woman, an adjunct professor, has been looking at photographs of bombings. She notes in her e-mail message that in viewing images of napalmed villages in Viet Nam, many of the victims were not wearing pants. She wants to know if this is some sort of Vietnamese tradition, not wearing pants.