« Um... | Main | Bonnie and Clyde? »
December 18, 2004
Without Sanctuary
On Saturday, we drove to Detroit and visited the Motown museum, then the African American History Museum.
The AAHM is currently host to the travelling exhibit "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America." We went to the Motown museum first, b/c we knew that Without Sanctuary was going to be heavy. To put it lightly.
Back in the day, photographers would make postcards of lynching events, and people would send them to their friends and family, collect them, sell them. Images of men hung from trees, with groups of smiling people around him on the ground. (Some images can be found here. The exhibit had over 100 postcards and related materials. It was indeed heavy, and a bit overwhelming, just bearing witness over and over again to just how cruel humans can be. You could see people as they entered, bracing themselves, not wanting to face it, but knowing they must - to educate themselves, to work through anger, to recognize what happened and to honor the people it happened to. Every time I would want to skip ahead and maybe note read every caption, I felt as though I was insulting the dead man whose life I did not ever so breifly reflect on by reading the caption on his postcard.
The most powerful aspect of the exhibit for me was a movie short they showed. It was about a black man named James Cameron - now in his 80s - who had breifly escaped being hung. Full story told here. The short also interviews the brother of the white man (Claude Deeter) who was killed in the incident that caused the mob. Cameron actually left the crime scene before the murder because he recognized Deeter as a friend. The movie shows Deeter's brother, in present day, meeting James Cameron for the first time. Seeing the forgiveness and peace between these two men, so many years later, was so moving. That these two men, at the center of it all, are moving towards peace with each other, despite the image captured forever of exactly the opposite. The reminder that that's the only way. One person at a time.
Photos from the weekend in Michigan
Posted by nikl at December 18, 2004 11:11 AM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)