Arcana:

Allen, James, Hilton Als, Congressman John Lewis & Leon F. Litwack. James Allen, Editor. Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Publishers, 2000. First Edition 1/4000. 4to. Cloth in Dust Jacket. Photography Monograph. Fine/Fine. 212pp, 98 color illustrations. Designed by Arlyn Nathan and Jack Woody. "The Tuskegee Institute records the lynching of 3,436 blacks between 1882 and 1950. This is probably a small percentage of these murders, which were seldom reported, and led to the creation of the NAACP in 1909, an organization dedicated to passing federal anti-lynching laws. Through all this terror and carnage someone - many times a professional photographer - carried a camera and took pictures of the events. These lynching photographs were often made into postcards and sold as souvenirs to the crowds in attendance. These images are some of photography's most brutal, surviving to this day so that we may now look back on the terrorism unleashed on America's African-American community and perhaps know our history and ourselves better. The almost one hundred images reproduced here are a testament to the camera's ability to make us remember what we often choose to forget." This is the extremely unsettling book containing texts by Hilton Als, Congressman John Lewis and Leon F. Litwack published to coincide with a 2000 circulating exhibition of examples from James Allen's collection of harrowing vintage photographic scenes of American lynchings. A brand new, most handsome example of the uncommon 2000 Twin Palms first printing. 0-944092-69-1 Inventory Number: 026565