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Lynching and Antilynching: Art and Politics in the 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Marlene Park
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Extract

Lynching became a fact of American life after the Civil War, but it only became an important subject for writers of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and a subject for visual artists in the 1930s. During the Depression, antilynching works were first a reaction to the widespread outrage over the Scottsboro case and then part of the political and legislative efforts to make lynching a federal offense. In early 1935, both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Communist Party's John Reed Club held competing art exhibitions that not only condemned lynching but also supported their legislative objectives. After World War II, when Civil Rights legislation became the main priority, images of lynching continued primarily in the works of African-American artists. But in these later works, lynching became the prime symbol of American racism, springing from a black perspective rather than from particular political campaigns or from contemporary experience.

Type
Research Article
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Prospects , Volume 18 , October 1993 , pp. 311 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

NOTES

1. Kristie Jayne began preliminary research on lynching and art for the exhibition catalogue, Bridges and Boundaries: African Americans and American Jews, ed. Salzman, Jack with Back, Adina and Sorin, Gretchen Sullivan (New York: George Braziller in association with the Jewish Museum, 1992).Google Scholar I am grateful to Kevin Gerard for lending me material from Kristie's files and to Julie Reiss of the Jewish Museum for all her help. A short version was given as a talk at a symposium, “The Role of Prints in American Art,” at the CUNY Graduate Center on December 4, 1992.

2. The largest number seems to be thirteen. In 1904 thirteen men were lynched in Arkansas. The NAACP gave the reason as “race prejudice” (see the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889–1918 [1919; rept. New York: Arno, 1969], p. 50).Google Scholar The most publicized mass lynching, of eleven Italians in 1891 in New Orleans, is recounted by Gambino, Richard, Vendetta (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977).Google Scholar

3. Cutler, James Elbert (Lynch-Law: An Investigation into the History of Lynching in the United States [1905; rept. Montclair, N.J.: Negro Universities Press, 1969], p. 172)Google Scholar gives the figures between 1882 and 1903 as forty-five Indians, twenty-eight Italians, twenty Mexicans, twelve Chinese, one Japanese, one Swiss, and one Bohemian. White, Walter Francis (Rope and Faggot [1929; rept. New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1969], p. 207)Google Scholar notes that between 1887 and 1902 the U.S. Government was forced to pay indemnities of over a half a million dollars to the governments of China, Italy, Great Britain, and Mexico. Ferrel, Claudine L. (Nightmare and Dream: Antilynching in Congress, 1917–1922 [New York: Garland, 1986], p. 148)Google Scholar cites a figure of $792,499.39.

4. These terms are taken from the NAACP's first book on lynching, Thirty Years of Lynching.

5. Two books contain some information about early lynchings: see Cutler, Lynch-Law, and Shay, Frank, Judge Lynch: His First Hundred Years (1938; rept. Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1969)Google Scholar; see also a recent anthology of articles on lynching, Lynching, Racial Violence, and Law (New York: Garland, 1992).Google Scholar

6. The statistics vary from source to source, but everyone agrees that they are inaccurate and probably underestimate the real number. One source of variation is whether or not they include the victims of race riots. The figures I cite are taken from Zangrando, Robert L. (The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909–1950 [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980], pp. 4, 6–7)Google Scholar and were provided by the Archives at Tuskegee Institute in 1979. The exact total is 4, 742 persons lynched, of whom 3,445 were black and 1,297 white. There were also “legal lynchings,” in which the accused was summarily sentenced to death by a court — without a fair trial — and executed. Wright, George C. (Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings” [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990])Google Scholar compared lynchings and “legal lynchings” and concluded that the latter increased as the former declined (see the table on page 227). He also found 353 lynchings in Kentucky rather than the 205 in most sources (p. 5), a chilling statistic.

7. Zangrando, , NAACP Crusade, p. 5, Table I.Google Scholar

8. It is interesting that during the Italian Renaissance art was considered a deterrent to crime. Edgerton, Samuel Y. Jr. (Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution During the Florentine Renaissance [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985])Google Scholar discusses such painting — scenes of punishment and public execution, and effigies of shame. I am grateful to Prof. Laurie Schneider of John Jay College of Criminal Justice for calling this to my attention.

9. Ames, Jessie Daniel, The Changing Character of Lynching: Review of Lynching, 1931–1941 (1942; rept. New York: AMS, 1973), pp. 23–26, 31–32.Google Scholar Ames was the executive director of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching.

10. Raper, Arthur F., The Tragedy of Lynching (1933; rept. Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1969), p. 47.Google Scholar

11. See Cutler, , Lynch-Law, pp. 109–10, 193–226Google Scholar, quote on p. 207. Cutler, despite the reasoned tone of his book, thought that Negroes were from an inferior civilization (pp. 224–25).

12. Cutler, , Lynch-Law, pp. 223–24.Google Scholar

13. One of the last such defenders was Collins, Winfield H., The Truth About Lynching and the Negro in the South (New York: Neale, 1918).Google Scholar The only movie approving of mob action was DeMille, Cecil B.'s This Day and Age (Universal, 1933)Google Scholar, in which a mob of youngsters nearly lynch a mobster (see chapter 9, “The Mob and the Search for Authority, 1933–1937,” in Bergman, Andrew, We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films [New York: New York University Press, 1971]).Google Scholar

14. See Ames, Jessie Daniel, Changing Character of LynchingGoogle Scholar, and Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign Against Lynching (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

15. Chadbourn, James Harmon (Lynching and the Law [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933])Google Scholar reviewed the existing state legislation, passed largely in the 1920s. He noted that “lynching is often interpreted as a protest against the inefficiency of courts as agencies for the punishment of crime” (p. 5). Zangrando, Robert L. (NAACP Crusade)Google Scholar gathers together scattered information about the early antilynching efforts.

16. Wells-Barnett, Ida B., Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, ed. Duster, Alfreda M. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

17. Wells-Barnett, , Crusade for Justice, pp. 61–62.Google Scholar See also Tucker, David M., “Miss Ida B. Wells and Memphis Lynching,” Phylon 32 (Summer 1971): 112–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Wells-Barnett, , Crusade for Justice, pp. 62–63.Google Scholar The leader she so much admired, Douglass, Frederick, published a pamphlet, Why is the Negro Lynched? (Bridgwater, England: John Whitby, 1895).Google Scholar

19. Some of her writings of the 1890s were collected as On Lynchings: Southern Horrors, a Red Record, Mob Rule in New Orleans (New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1969).Google Scholar For a recent account of her life as a journalist, organizer, and activist, see Thompson, Mildred I., Ida B. Wells-Barnett: An Exploratory Study of an American Black Woman, 1893–1930 (Brooklyn: Carlson, 1990).Google Scholar Her attacks in the name of justice extended to Jane Addams, whom she much admired (see Addams, Jane and Wells, Ida B., Lynching and Rape: An Exchange of Views, ed. by Aptheker, Bettina [New York: American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1977]).Google Scholar

20. Kellogg, Charles Flint (NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, vol 1, 1909–1920 [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967])Google Scholar provides a detailed account of the early years.

21. Blaustein, Albert P. and Zangrando, Robert L., eds., Civil Rights and the American Negro: A Documentary History (New York: Trident, 1968), p. 338Google Scholar (“The Tenth Annual Report of the NAACP for the Year 1919”).

22. Zangrando, NAACP Crusade, p. 21.

23. Despite the demands on his time, he published many other books, including Lynching: America's National Disgrace (New York: NAACP, 1924). His most popular work was a poem, “Lift ev'ry voice and sing,” set to music by his brother Rosamond, that became known as the “Negro National Hymn.” See his account in Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (New York: Viking, 1933), pp. 154–56.

24. Johnson (Along This Way, pp. 316–17) tells this story.

25. White also wrote an autobiography, A Man Called White (1948; rept. New York: Arno, 1969). Unfortunately he omitted any discussion of the 1935 art exhibition.

26. The Klan was organized in Tennessee in 1866 and was disbanded in 1869.

27. In 1923 the Supreme Court decision in Moore v. Dempsey reversed the legal damage of the Leo M. Frank ruling (see Zangrando, NAACP Crusade, pp. 85–86).

28. See Dinnerstein, Leonard, The Leo Frank Case (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).Google ScholarKellogg, (NAACP)Google Scholar gives a short but clear account (pp. 215–16). There are two other books on the case: Golden, Harry Lewis, The Lynching of Leo Frank (London: Cassell, 1966)Google Scholar; and Frey, Robert Seitz and Thompson-Frey, Nancy, The Silent and the Damned: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank (Lanham, Md.: Madison, 1988).Google Scholar

29. Rudwick, Elliott M., Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), pp. 53, 116.Google Scholar

30. See Waskow, Arthur I. (From Race Riot to Sit-In, 1919 and the 1960 [Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1967])Google Scholar, who focuses on the three major riots. Caughey, John Walton, ed. (Their Majesties, the Mob [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960])Google Scholar reproduces documents.

31. I quote the second stanza. The poem was first printed in 1919 in the Liberator, and reprinted by Johnson, James Weldon, ed., The Book of American Negro Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922), p. 134.Google Scholar

32. Zangrando, , NAACP Crusade, p. 165.Google Scholar

33. Kellogg, , NAACP, p. 91.Google Scholar

34. For an excellent account, see Ferrell, Nightmare and Dream. The various versions of the bill are reprinted in the appendices.

35. Ferrell, (Nightmare and Dream)Google Scholar gives a full and detailed account. For a brief history, see Maslow, Will and Robison, Joseph B., “Civil Rights Legislation and the Fight for Equality, 1862–1952,” University of Chicago Law Review 20 (Spring 1953): 363–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Goodman, Andrew, Chaney, James Earl, and Schwerner, Michael disappeared on 06 21, 1964Google Scholar, in Neshoba County, near Philadelphia, Mississippi (see Whitehead, Don, Attack on Terror: The FBI. Against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi [New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1970]).Google Scholar In brief, the Supreme Court ruled in 1966 that the perpetrators could be tried for conspiracy to deprive the victims of their civil rights, and the trial was held in Federal Court in Meridian in 1967. In 1932 and 1935 the Supreme Court had overturned the conviction of the Scottsboro boys based on the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment (see Blaustein, and Zangrando, , Civil Rights, pp. 346–50).Google Scholar The Fourteenth Amendment was first used for the purpose for which it was intended in the 1953–54 landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case. See Kluger, Richard (Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality [New York: Knopf, 1976], pp. 626–56, and 667–710)Google Scholar for a dramatic account of the constitutional issues, the NAACP's role, and the difficulties of arguing the case. Prof. T. Kenneth Moran, chair of Law and Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, kindly provided the reference to Whitehead and Kluger. According to Professor Moran, the particular Civil Rights Code in the Mississippi prosecution was Title 42 U.S. Code, Section 1983.

37. Zangrando, , NAACP Crusade, p. 64.Google Scholar

38. See Zangrando, (NAACP Crusade, pp. 66–69)Google Scholar for a full account.

39. Johnson, , Along This Way, p. 373.Google Scholar Dyer and the NAACP worked for passage in 1923 as well (see Zangrando, , NAACP Crusade, pp. 83–84).Google Scholar

40. White, , A Man Called White, p. 40.Google Scholar

41. White, A Man Called White, p. 41.Google Scholar

42. See his account in A Man Called White (pp. 47–51).Google Scholar In Chicago he was nearly shot because he was mistaken for white, (see pp. 44–45).Google Scholar

43. Zangrando, , NAACP Crusade, p. 90.Google Scholar

44. See Waldron, Edward E., Walter White and the Harlem Renaissance (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1978).Google Scholar

45. White, , A Man Called White, p. 67.Google Scholar

46. White, , A Man Called White, p. 70.Google Scholar There are a great many literary works, particularly by African-American writers, about lynching (see Harris, Trudier, Exorcising Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning Rituals [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984]).Google Scholar

47. White, , A Man Called White, p. 67.Google Scholar

48. White, , A Man Called White, p. 94.Google Scholar

49. White, , Rope and Faggot, p. viii.Google Scholar

50. See Mason, Lauris, The Lithographs of George Bellows: A Catalogue Raisonne (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO, 1977), p. 189.Google Scholar

51. Johnson, , Book of American Negro Poetry, “Brothers,” pp. 86–88.Google Scholar The part quoted here is also quoted by Wintz, Cary D., Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance (Houston: Rice University Press, 1988), p. 106.Google Scholar Johnson included other lynching poems in the anthology: Dunbar, Paul Laurence's, “The Haunted Oak” (pp. 11–13)Google Scholar, and two by McKay, Claude, “The Lynching” and “To the White Fiends” (pp. 133, 135).Google Scholar

52. Raper, , Tragedy of Lynching, p. 38.Google Scholar

53. Zangrando, , NAACP Crusade, p. 94.Google Scholar See also Record, Wilson, Race and Radicalism: The NAACP and the Communist Party in Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1964), p. 38.Google Scholar Attacks from the Left had begun earlier. See Seligmann, Herbert J. (The Negro Faces America [1920; rept. New York: Harper and Row, 1969], pp. 291–300)Google Scholar, where he recounts the socialist attacks on the NAACP in Randolph, A. Philip and Owen, Chandler's The Messenger in the 1910s.Google Scholar

54. The Third Period actually refers to the Communist analysis of the stages of capitalism, but in effect was also a period in party history. See Howe, Irving and Coser, Lewis (The American Communist Party: A Critical History [1962; rept. New York: DaCapo, 1974])Google Scholar for the most recent general history and (pp. 178–81) for the Third Period. For the policies on blacks, see Record, Race and Radicalism, pp. 52–56.Google Scholar For the ILD, see Naison, Mark, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. 34.Google Scholar

55. Naison, , Communists in Harlem, p. 42 and n. 36.Google Scholar He writes, “Communists formed a new organization called the League of Struggle for Negro Rights in November, 1930, that made the suppression of lynching the central point in its program …; Communists pulled off a public relations coup by persuading Langston Hughes, perhaps the best known poet of the Harlem Renaissance, to become the organization's president.”

56. Carter, Dan T., Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), p. 20.Google Scholar

57. Carter, , Scottsboro, p. 49.Google Scholar

58. Carter, , Scottsboro, pp. 61, 68.Google Scholar See Haywood, Harry, “The Scottsboro Decision: Victory of Revolutionary Struggle Over Reformist Betrayal,” Communist 11 (12 1932): 1065–75.Google Scholar The entire article is an attack on the NAACP. A good example of Communist rhetoric appears on page 1,071: “It was by these methods that the N.A.A.C.P. leaders attempted to disorganize the revolutionary mass movement, isolate the Communist Party and the revolutionary organizations and furnish a cloak behind which the Alabama lynchers could carry through their bloody work. In brief, their attacks were directed not against the violence and lynch terror of the capitalists, but against the resistance of the masses. Truly, in Scottsboro the N.A.A.C.P. played the role of assistant hangman of Negro masses.” Naison, , (Communists in Harlem, p. 159 n. 3)Google Scholar mentions this and another article by Haywood, a well-known African American, that I cite later as the best examples of the CP attack on Negro reformism. Gellert, Hugo's cartoon, The Scottsboro Legal LynchingGoogle Scholar, shows the NAACP as the hangman (New Masses 7 [02 1932]).Google Scholar

59. Carter, , Scottsboro, p. 425.Google Scholar The author was then involved in a lawsuit against the makers of a docudrama and ends the book with a journal of that trial.

60. Philip Guston did other lynching images early in his career. An oil painting also titled Conspirators of 1930Google Scholar, now lost, shows a robed and hooded figure from the back, holding a whip with a cross and rope in the background. Guston also painted three fresco panels about the Scottsboro boys in 1931. One of these panels depicted a Klan figure beating a black man bound to a post. The murals were for the John Reed Club in Los Angeles, where Guston lived at the time, and were destroyed in a police raid (see San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Philip Guston, organized by Hopkins, Henry T., essay by Feld, Ross [New York: Braziller; San Francisco: The Museum, 1980]). The oil is reproduced as Figure 1.Google Scholar

61. See White, , Rope and FaggotGoogle Scholar, chap. 3, “Religion And Judge Lynch.” His assessment is a scathing one: “It is exceedingly doubtful if lynching could possibly exist under any other religion than Christianity. Not only through tacit approval and acquiescence has the Christian Church indirectly given its approval to lynchlaw and other forms of race prejudice, but the evangelical Christian denominations have done much towards creation of the particular fanaticism which finds an outlet in lynching” (p. 40). White specifically attacks Protestantism: “Not only did the Church, by adroit sophistry, dodge the issue of human bondage, but theologians actually utilized the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ in defence of the system. …” (p. 44). Raper, (Tragedy of Lynching, p. 22)Google Scholar has a section on “Attitudes of Large and Small Churches.” He said that ministers of the large congregations condemned mob rule, “while nearly all the ministers of the smaller outlying churches of these denominations expressed sympathy with the mob.”

62. Elsen, Albert E., Seymour Lipton, (New York: Harry Abrams, 1970), p. 15.Google Scholar Ahron Ben-Shmuel's small bronze sculpture of circa 1932, The Martyr, is in the Mitchell Wolfson, Jr., Collection in Miami.

63. Elsen, , Seymour Lipton, p. 16.Google Scholar

64. Diego Rivera in his 1933 portable mural panels for the New Workers School made the most explicit images of lynchings of African Americans. See reproductions of Reconstruction, Modern Industry, and The New Freedom. The last has portraits of the Scottsboro boys in jail (see Hurlburt, Laurance P., The Mexican Muralists in the United States [Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989], pp. 181, 183, 184).Google Scholar

65. “Notes from Aaron Douglas, October 27, 1949,” Aaron Douglas file, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. For a color reproduction, see Plate 8, Driskell, David et al. , Harlem Renaissance Art of Black America (New York: Harry Abrams for Studio Museum in Harlem, 1987).Google Scholar

66. Zangrando, , NAACP Crusade, pp. 114–25.Google Scholar

67. Zangrando, , NAACP Crusade, p. 129.Google Scholar

68. Roy Wilkins mentions the exhibit in his introduction to the 1969 reprint of Rope and Faggot, and Zangrando, (NAACP Crusade) discusses the exhibition (pp. 125–26).Google Scholar Other authors also briefly discuss the exhibitions, for instance, Tyler, Francine, “Artists Respond to the Great Depression and the Threat of Fascism: The New York Artists' Union and Its Magazine Art Front (1934–1937),” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1991), pp. 205–7.Google Scholar

69. White, Walter to Block, Julius, 12 20, 1934Google Scholar, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Group I, C206 (hereafter NAACP Papers).

70. White, Walter to MrsWhitney, Harry Payne, 12 13, 1934, NAACP Papers.Google Scholar

71. White, Walter to MrsBellows, George, 12 13, 1934, NAACP Papers.Google Scholar

72. White, Walter to Fitzpatrick, Daniel, 12 29, 1934, NAACP Papers.Google Scholar

73. Some John Reed Club artists refused to lend their work to the NAACP exhibition. White had written to William Gropper to request a piece. On January 5, 1935, Gropper answered that he would be glad to send some drawings. On February 7, White sent him a telegram as the catalogue went to the printer, asking for the title and asking when to expect the piece. Gropper, instead, sent his work to A.C.A. (NAACP Papers).

74. Kristie Jayne kept handwritten lists of artists who were invited to participate but did not: “Charles Alston (?), Romare Bearden, Joseph Burck, [William] Gropper, [Hugo] Gellert, Zell Ingram, B[oardman]. Robinson, Art Young, Wortman, Dennis (World-Telegram)Google Scholar, Spruance (Germantown, PA), James Lesesne Wells (Howard Univ.), [Louis] Lozowick, Albert Smith (NYC), [Nicolai] Cikovsky, [Ben] Shahn, [George] Grosz, [Adolph] Dehn, [Chuzo] Tamotzu, [Grant] Wood, [John] Sloan, E[dward] Laning, [Walter] Quirt, [Anton] Refregier, Miguel Covarrubias, Aaron Douglas?” Some of the artists may not have had images or time to make them, but others were radical artists who lent their works to the competing John Reed Club exhibit. Kristie Jayne's files, currently in the author's possession, came from the Jewish Museum and Kevin Gerard.

75. “In Mr. White's Office, 1/16/35,” NAACP Papers. The list included Stars Fell on Alabama, with Romare Bearden's name in script as the artist. It was not in the show. Handwritten lists at the bottom of the sheet indicate that they asked “3 or 4 artists to do poster for invitation” and planned to send “Posters to Art Students Lge [League]; Public Library, Schools.…”

76. “Protests Bar Show of Art on Lynching,” New York Times, 02 12, 1935, p. 23.Google Scholar

77. “Protests Fail to Halt Lynch Art Show,” New York Amsterdam News, Saturday, 02 16, 1936, NAACP Papers.Google Scholar

78. For the John Reed Club, see Harrison, Helen A., “John Reed Club Artists and the New Deal: Radical Responses to Roosevelt's ‘Peaceful Revolution,’” Prospects 5 (1980): 240–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Marquardt, Virginia Hagelstein, “New Masses and John Reed Club Artists, 1926–1936: Evolution of Ideology, Subject Matter, and Style,” Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 12 (Spring 1989): 56–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Shapiro, David, ed. (Social Realism: Art as a Weapon [New York: Frederick Ungar, 1973])Google Scholar reprints the 1932 “Draft Manifesto of the John Reed Clubs” (pp. 42–46)Google Scholar and other important documents.

79. White, Walter to Gellert, Hugo, 01 16, 1935, NAACP Papers.Google Scholar

80. For the catalogue, see the file on lynching at the Schomburg Center. Erskine Caldwell's short essay turned the tables on the South, characterizing Southerners in similar terms to those used by Southerners and others to justify racism at the turn of the century. He wrote of lynching, “Its locale is almost always in the Southern States where the cultural standard of the white population is far below the level of Western civilization. It is a primitive, barbaric custom that appeals to that part of man's nature which has not been benefitted by contact and association with civilizing influences.”

81. The Marsh drawing was reproduced, courtesy The New Yorker, in Crisis 42 (01 1935): 13.Google Scholar

82. Burdett, Winston, “Artists Call Attention to the Gentle Art of Lynching,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 02 15, 1935, NAACP Papers.Google Scholar

83. , M. M., “Art Commentary on Lynching,” Art News 33 (02 23, 1935): 13.Google Scholar

84. , J. W. L., “Current Exhibitions,” Parnassus 7 (03, 1935): 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jewel, Edward Alden (“Noguchi Sculpture in Metal Exhibited,” New York Times, 01 31, 1935)Google Scholar reviewed Noguchi's solo show and devoted most of the column to Death. He called the subject gruesome and devoted a long paragraph to describing the sickening horror and contorted agony and found “an agony so real as to constitute an all but insufferable sight.” His conclusion was not favorable: “As a work of art, however, it seems merely sensational and of extremely dubious value.”

85. “Art: Lynching Show Opens in Spite of Opposition ‘Outburst,’” News-Week in the Arts (02 23, 1935): 19Google Scholar. Pictures by Curry, Marsh, and Warren Wheelock were reproduced. The last-named showed a monumental stylized, draped female figure in profile holding out a lynched figure. The allegorical female has stars where the head should be and, combined with the striped pattern of the dress, suggests an American flag.

86. Allan Freelon of Philadelphia wrote to White about Freelon's drawing, Barbecue – American Style: “I have not attempted to portray any particular lynching, but merely to record the horror of what has come to be a major sports event, with radio announcements and invitations in advance. I have shown only the feet of the crowd, but by means of them have expressed their emotions ranging from indifference to squirming discomfort (the feet of the small boy). I have taken that moment when the victim first feels the flames begin to lick at his body” (Freelon, Allan to White, Walter, 02 2, 1935, NAACP Papers)Google Scholar. A reproduction of the wash drawing is included among the papers. Curry's lithograph The Law is Too Slow also shows that moment. Other artists made the point about sporting events: A prominent figure of a lyncher in Harris, Lorenzo, Civilization in America, 1931: One of Our Major SportsGoogle Scholar, wears knickers and a sweater with a big “U” for university on it (see The Crisis 38 [03 1931]: 95).Google Scholar

87. See McGovern, James R., Anatomy of a Lynching: The Killing of Claude Neal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

88. The piece may have been by Charles Alston. In a letter to him, White wrote, “I went down to the A.C.A. Gallery today to see the opposition antilynching show. The man there tells me that the ‘Comrades’ refused to hang your drawing because it was ‘too strong’. Is this true?” (White, Walter to Alson, Charles, 03 13, 1935, NAACP Papers)Google Scholar. The reviewer implies that the picture was rejected by White, but Alston was a sponsor of the John Reed Club show (cf. “A Call for a United Anti-Lynch Exhibition,” New Masses 14 (02 26, 1935): 21.Google Scholar

89. , J. T., “Lynching Art Show Lauded,” New York Amsterdam News, 02 23, 1935.Google Scholar

90. “An Art Exhibit Against Lynching,” The Crisis 42 (04 1935): 106.Google Scholar

91. The College Art Association toured the exhibition after it closed in New York City. At the end of February, White wrote to Woodruff about the tour: “The present tentative schedule is to have it open next in Philadelphia, then to Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Chapel Hill and then Atlanta.” Judging from the letter, he intended to have local sponsors in every city: “This minimizes the charge of ‘propaganda’ and causes people to consider the exhibition on the basis of artistic merit and of the social message it carries” (White, Walter to Woodruff, Hale, 02 28, 1935, NAACP Papers).Google Scholar

92. Taylor also exhibited Second Morning. There is no such title in his lithographic notebooks on microfilm at the Archives of American Art, so it was probably a drawing. Taylor continued to exhibit the lithograph and gave one to the Library of Congress. Perhaps the first such Harlem Renaissance image was Aaron Douglas's illustration for James Weldon Johnson's poems. The Crucifixion shows a heroic and dynamic Black Simon carrying the cross, the focal point of the composition. The poem and illustration may have encouraged African-American artists to use such imagery for lynching (see God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse [1927; rept. New York: Viking, 1955], opp. 39).Google Scholar

93. In note 15, on page 254, Zangrando (NAACP Crusade) says, “Incidentally, the original Thomas Hart Benton painting never appeared. Left, out of season, in his country cottage, it suffered the effects of inclement weather and a leaky cottage roof and was damaged beyond repair (letter to the author from Thomas Hart Benton, March [n.d.], 1963).” Some of the reviews of the show, however, were not written from press releases and seem to indicate that the picture was in the show. The Benton was reproduced in the “An Art Commentary on Lynching” catalogue. Adams, Henry (Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original [New York: Knopf, 1989])Google Scholar reproduced the painting (p. 251), dated it 1934, and wrote in the caption that the painting was in the NAACP exhibition. He also noted, “Benton's painting, one of his few statements of pure social protest, was ruined by water damage after he stored it in a leaky shed on Martha's Vineyard.”

94. Curry also painted a mural entitled Law versus Mob Rule for the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., in 1937Google Scholar. It shows a robed judge on the steps of a courthouse backed up by officers of the law and holding off, with a gesture, a mob with a bloodhound (see Baigell, Matthew, “The Relevancy of Curry's Paintings of Black Freedom,” in University of Kansas Museum of Art, John Steuart Curry: A Retrospective of His Work Held in the Kansas State Capitol, Topeka, October 3-November 3, 1970, ed. Waller, Bret [Lawrence: University of Kansas Museum of Art, 1970], pp. 19–29)Google Scholar. White also wrote to Grant Wood, the third in the triumvirate of regionalists, requesting a picture. Wood was sorry but too busy at the moment (see Sara Sherman for Grant Wood to Walter White, January 4, 1935, NAACP Papers).

95. Raper, (Tragedy of Lynching)Google Scholar has two interesting sections: “The Man-Hunt Tradition” and “Man-Hunters and Bloodhounds” (pp. 9–10)Google Scholar. On page 9, he writes, “The man-hunt provides an opportunity for carrying and flourishing firearms with impunity, a privilege which appeals strongly to the more irresponsible elements. Moreover, manhunts and lynchings make it possible for obscure and irresponsible people to play the roles of arresting officers, grand jurors, trial judges, and executioners.” In 1934 Curry also did a lithograph, Manhunt, as part of a portfolio published by the Contemporary Print Group in New York City. The lithograph is more realistic and more frightening than the painting, which features a mounted man on a spirited horse in the foreground. For an excellent discussion of Curry, see Kendall, M. Sue, Rethinking Regionalism: John Steuart Curry and the Kansas Mural Controversy (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986)Google Scholar. Kendall reproduces the lithograph of Manhunt as Figure 10.

96. Hughes, Langston's “Flight” was published in Opportunity 8 (06 1930): 182Google Scholar. It was reprinted in Hughes, 's anthology, Dear Lovely Death (Amenia, N.Y.: Privately printed at the Troutbeck Press, 1931), n.p.Google Scholar

97. White, Walter to Bloch, Julius, 12 20, 1934, NAACP PapersGoogle Scholar. Judging by the salutation and the informality of the letter, White was already on good terms with Bloch.

98. Likos, Patricia, Julius Bloch: Portrait of the Artist, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 79 (Summer 1983): 12Google Scholar. The entire issue (no. 339) is devoted to Bloch. Likos says that the moment is when Christ asks, “Why have you forsaken me?” Bloch exhibited in a heavy wide frame to further the religious association in his 1932 exhibit at the Little Gallery of Contemporary Art. Likos also mentions the 1935 NAACP show, and Bloch's surprise when Juliana Force brought the picture for the Whitney collection. The other Bloch painting was The Prisoner of 1933, Public Works of Art Project, on deposit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is reproduced as Figure 18. It shows the manacled figure of an African-American man below a window in a dark cell.

There is a sepia wash for The Lynching at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York City. The gallery also has a wood engraving of 1935 by Bloch entitled Civilization, A.D. 1935 that inlcudes lynching as one of its images.

99. White, Walter to Biddle, George, 01 18, 1935, NAACP Papers.Google Scholar

100. I am grateful to James A. Ganz, Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, Philadelphia Museum of Art, for sending me the photograph.

101. Interview with Murray, Al, 11 18, 1968Google Scholar, Archives of American Art, transcript, p. 3. At the beginning of the interview, Woodruff stressed the interchange of ideas, whether between artists and intellectuals or between blacks and whites, as a characteristic of the Harlem Renaissance.

102. They are reproduced by Locke, Alain, The Negro in Art (1940; rept. New York: Hacker Art, 1971), p. 57Google Scholar. Locke dates them 1938, but they were done for the exhibition in 1935. Locke's book reproduces more lynching images than any other source. White wrote to Woodruff in early February, saying he would use both of his prints and the one by Jennings, who was at Morehouse College in Atlanta. White also asked about a “portfolio of woodcuts done by your students you were going to send me,” and asked to have Woodruff's and Jennings' prints for the office (White, Walter to Woodruff, Hale, 02 9, 1935Google Scholar, NAACP Papers).

103. The Newton catalogue gives the title as On the Way to the Lynching. Cadmus wrote to White on January 28, 1935: “I shall be very pleased to submit to your forthcoming anti-lynching show, a drawing which I started immediately upon receipt of your letter of January 26th.” He then recommended his friend, Jared French, to White, and French's Lynched was in the Newton show (Cadmus, Paul to White, Walter, 01 28, 1935, NAACP Papers).Google Scholar

104. The call is more revealing than Angelo Herndon's catalogue essay, “Pictures Can Fight!” “A Call for a United Anti-Lynch Exhibition” was signed by the John Reed Club, Artists Union, and Artists Committee of Action. It began by mentioning the NAACP exhibition, and concluded, “We feel that the purpose of the N.A.A.C.P. is not only misleading, but even harmful.” The second paragraph said the Wagner-Costigan Bill, “which does not even include death penalty for lynchers, is harmful in that it tends to prevent a militant struggle for a real Federal Anti-Lynch Bill, which is the Bill for Negro Rights and Suppression of Lynching. It attempts to separate the struggle against lynching from the struggle for civil rights of the Negro people.” The third paragraph begins, “The N.A.A.C.P. proposal definitely denies a participation in the exhibition to the I.L.D., National Scottsboro-Herndon Action Committee and other such organizations which are leading the struggle against lynching.” Under Subject the writers specify, “Any aspect of the struggle for the liberation of the Negro race. The joint struggle of black and white workers. Share-croppers Union, Scottsboro and Angelo Herndon. The treachery of the N.A.A.C.P. leaders, and of the Negro bourgeoisie” (see New Masses 14 [02 26, 1935]: 21Google Scholar; also circulated as a leaflet). Seven artists, who signed the call, were not listed in the catalogue: Nicolai Cikovsky, Stuart Davis, Aaron Douglas, Russell Limbach, Ben Shahn, Raphael Soyer, and Chuzo Tamotzu. According to William C. Agee, Stuart Davis did send a piece to the exhibit, but too late for inclusion in the catalogue. I am grateful to Prof. Patricia Hills for sending me a photocopy of the catalogue; I subsequently found several copies in the unsorted papers of Anton Refregier at the New York office of the AAA.

105. The Artists' Union was organized in response to government employment of artists; the Artists' Committee of Action to protest against the destruction of Rivera's mural at Rockefeller Center; and the Vanguard, a group formed by Louise Thompson and the sculptor, Augusta Savage, to introduce Harlem to “progressive” political and artistic thought.

106. Zangrando, , NAACP Crusade, p. 100 and n. 17.Google Scholar

107. See Naison, , Communists in Harlem, pp. 75 and 154–55, 201, 299.Google Scholar

108. E. G. (?), “Art for Negro,” New York World-Telegram, 03 9, 1935Google Scholar. For Wolff, see Naumann, Francis M. and Avrich, Paul, “Adolf Wolff: ‘Poet, Sculptor and Revolutionist, but Mostly Revolutionist,’” Art Bulletin 67 (09 1985): 486–500Google Scholar, Figure 19, dated ca. 1931. His sculpture, Lynch Law, 1931Google Scholar, Figure 20, was exhibited in a John Reed Club show in 1931 that was shown in Moscow in 1932 and purchased by the Soviet Union.

109. Alexander, Stephen, “Art,” New Masses 14 (03 19, 1935): 29Google Scholar. Stevedore was a play about longshoremen in New Orleans.

110. “Noguchi's ‘Sculpture’ [Death], Orozco's ‘Negroes,’ Gropper's ‘Southern Landscape,’ Refregier's ‘Death in Alabama,’ Sternberg's ‘Southern Holiday,’ and Harriton's ‘Lynching’….”

111. Warsager's, “The Law,” Siegel's “Sharecroppers” and “Southern Scene,” Burck's “Southern Holiday,” Quirt's “Have Faith in the Law,” Hilton's “Unite,” Ozanian's “The Lynchers,” Marantz's “American Scene,” Gellert's “Scottsboro,” and Candell's “After-Dinner Speech.”

112. New Masses 10 (01 9, 1934): 7.Google Scholar

113. See, for instance, Haywood, Harry's article, “The Scottsboro Decision: Victory of Revolutionary Struggle Over Reformist Betrayal” (Communist 11 [12 1932]: 1065–75)Google Scholar for the Marxist view of the legal system. Some Jewish artists, in their materials in the Archives of American Art, made very specific connections between Jews in Nazi Germany and African Americans in the South. Georges Schreiber, in an interview with Duncan Macdonald in early December of 1965 for WQXR, likened the experience of psychological torture “of Jewish children in Nazi Germany to Negro children in the deep south” (transcript, Archives of American Art, p. 5). Hugo Gellert, in an interview with Paul Buhle, on April 4, 1984, said, “Hundreds of thousands of Jews were taken into those concentration camps [in Hungary]. Not only prison camps, but were exterminated. The death camps. And for the Negroes naturally, like for the Scottsboro boys, making pamphlets, making drawings” (transcript, Archives of American Art, p. 13).

114. No. 121 in Flint, Janet, The Prints of Louis Lozowick: A Catalogue Raisonne (New York: Hudson Hills, 1982).Google Scholar

115. Lozowick, Louis to DrO'Connor, Francis V., 06 9, 1972Google Scholar. Lozowick Papers, Archives of American Art, 1334; quoted by Flint, , Prints of Louis Lozowick, no. 134Google Scholar. There is a also drawing for the lithograph that is more specific: it shows a hooded klansman below a fiery cross with a thorn-crowned head at the crossing to the left of the self-portrait. Lozowick printed at the John Reed Club workshop.

116. Vogel, Joseph's lithograph, Chain GangGoogle Scholar, printed at the John Reed Club workshop, is still in the artist's possession in Roswell, New Mexico. Philip Reisman's etching, South, done on the PWAP in 1934, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art print collection (see Bianco, George D., The Prints of Philip Reisman [Bedford, N.Y.: Bedford, 1992]), p. 45)Google Scholar. Anton Refregier's lithographic crayon drawing, Landscape – Black Belt, reproduced on the cover of the John Reed Club catalogue, is at Srago Gallery, New York City, as are his large gouache, Death in Alabama, and the drawing for it. Louis Ribak's American Festival is probably the pastel entitled Lynching in the collection of the Jewish Museum.

117. Besides Sternberg, they were Sam Becker, Aaron Goodelman, Noguchi, and Orozco. Goodelman did lynching sculptures in 1933. One, Necklace, a small bronze of a three-quarter figure, was recently acquired by the Jewish Museum, Kristie A. Jayne Fund, with the cooperation of the Goodelman family. The title in the 1935 catalogue is The Necklace.

118. The Newton catalog does not specify the medium, but if the painting rather than a lithograph had been exhibited the catalogue would have noted that the work was in the collection of the Whitney Museum (Sternberg, Harry to White, Walter, stamped on receipt 01 7, 1935, NAACP Papers)Google Scholar. The painting has only one pillar; it was done first, the lithograph in 1935, probably for the Newton show.

119. Sternberg, , Harry Sternberg: A Catalogue Raisonne of His Graphic Work (Wichita, Kans.: Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, 1975), no. 117.Google Scholar

120. Boris Gorelick to Marlene Park and Gerald E. Markowitz, August 30, 1976, quoted in part in New Deal for Art (Hamilton, N.Y.: Gallery Association of New York State, 1977), p. 88Google Scholar. Ames, Jessie Daniel (Changing Character of Lynching, pp. 34–50)Google Scholar lists lynchings by states, but none of her brief accounts of those in Mississippi match Gorelick's decription.

121. The song, with words and music by Lewis Allan, was copyrighted in 1940. Michael Meeropol, his adopted son, recalled the date and origin of the poem. I am grateful to Prof. Gerald E. Markowitz for asking him and to Prof. Raymond Kennedy for a copy of the sheet music. Sternberg, Harry included an image of Strange Fruit in Sternberg: A Life in Woodcuts (San Diego: Brighton, 1991)Google Scholar. Jacob Lawrence's series are undoubtedly the best-known paintings today. For instance, the caption of no. 15 in The Migration of the Negro Series, 1940–1941Google Scholar, reads, “Another cause was lynching. It was found that where there had been a lynching, the people who were reluctant to leave at first left immediately after this.” In the painting, lynching is symbolized by a noose hanging from a bare branch. The migrations were so predictable that T. Arnold Hill of the Chicago Urban League said, “Whenever we read newspaper dispatches of a public hanging or burning … we get ready to extend greetings to the people from the immediate vicinity of the lynchings” (quoted by Ferrell, , Nightmare and Dream, p. 90)Google Scholar. There were also lynchings or at least references to them in plays and even in dances during the 1930s.

122. Zangrando, , NAACP Crusade, pp. 143, 162Google Scholar. White, (A Man Called White, p. 172) gives the vote as 277 to 119.Google Scholar

123. See Blaustein, and Zangrando, (Civil Rights and the American Negro, pp. 351–54)Google Scholar for text of the bill.

124. White, , A Man Called White, p. 173Google Scholar. The one African-American member of Congress, Arthur W. Mitchell of Chicago, had introduced an antilynching bill. White thought it so innocuous that the NAACP fought to defeat it.

125. White, , A Man Called White, pp. 347–48.Google Scholar

126. Montclair Art Museum, The Afro-American Artist in the Age of Cultural Pluralism, (Montclair, N.J.: Montclair Art Museum, 1987), p. 13.Google Scholar

127. Ames, , Changing Character of Lynching, p. 44Google Scholar: “Duck Hill, Montgomery County, April 13: Roosevelt Towns and Bootjack McDaniels, Negroes, accused of murdering a white storekeeper, were taken from Sheriff E. E. Wright, as they were being led from the courthouse at Winona after indictment proceedings, and burned to death with blow torches.” Life ([02 14, 1955]: 141) reproduced the photo.Google Scholar

128. White, , A Man Called White, pp. 123, 172Google Scholar. “I shall never forget a dramatic experience in 1937 as Southern congressmen like Rankin of Mississippi and Hatton W. Summers of Texas bombastically orated about ‘states’ rights' and declared that the South itself would stop lynching if only it were let alone. As the Civil War was being fought on the floor of the House, I was summoned hastily from my seat in the gallery. A friendly newspaperman had snatched from the news ticker an Associated Press dispatch telling of the blowtorch lynching of two Negroes at Duck Hill, Mississippi. It was one of the most unbelievable barbarities in human history. I sent the clipping in to Congressman Joseph A. Gavagan of New York, who was leading the fight for the anti-lynching bill. The startling dispatch was read quietly but with terribly dramatic impact. One would have thought that such a revelation would have silenced, at least temporarily, the congressional defenders of lynching. It did not. After the gasp of horror which swept the House had subsided, the Southern orators resumed their onslaught as though nothing had happened” (p. 123).

129. Quoted in Willis, Deborah and Dodson, Howard, Black Photographers Bear Witness: 100 Years of Social Protest (Williamstown, Mass.: Williams College Museum of Art, 1989), p. 18Google Scholar. Adrian Piper also based her 1989 lynching series, Free, on horrifying photographs of the body of Michael McDonald, who was lynched by the Klan in 1981.