To the Editor:

Benjamin Schwarz’s review of “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America” (Book Review, Feb. 14) should have been titled “In Defense of Lynchings.” What a racist bit of writing! Most of it justifies these murders by going on and on about the supposed criminal excesses of blacks at that time. Let me remind Schwarz that the entire period of Reconstruction was about robbing black people of the political and economic power they had developed in a short period of time.

His insistence that many or most of the lynchings were a response to actual crimes is based on his (and the period’s) belief that only a white person’s testimony has any weight in considering justice. Schwarz and other apologists for the Southern lynch mobs never consider that these murdered black men, who were chattel for more than 200 years, were “freed” without the promised 40 acres and a mule, discriminated against, often unable to find work and then subjected to the random accusations and nooses of the white lynch mobs, who brought their children, laughed and ate popcorn while watching black people hang and burn.

I wonder if Schwarz also believes that many of the prisoners sent to the concentration camps in Europe must also have been guilty of crimes because so many of the Nazis said that they were.

Pamela Branch

Los Angeles, Calif.

To the Editor:

Rather than the “floating” black boogey man Benjamin Schwarz suggests in his critique of James Allen’s book “Without Sanctuary,” to my eyes the photo of lynching victim Frank Embree depicts quite plainly a human being about to be (completely) tortured to death by some “real” savages.

It’s a tragedy that the playground logic of “they did it, so we did it too” which Schwarz applies so recklessly would not allow him to make such a connection. His willingness to rationalize the gruesome deaths of thousands of black men, women and children, by calling upon the same depraved stereotypes that fed this slaughter, convinces me Schwarz has no soul. The modern-day race paranoia his words exemplify makes me wonder if he has also lost his mind.

Tonye Allen

Los Angeles, Calif.

To the Editor:

If the front-page photo of the lynching of Frank Embree, July 22, 1899, Fayette, Mo., is the “legacy” represented by the flags flying over the Capitol buildings of South Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia, their secession should have been facilitated and not contested by the tragedy of the Civil War. I’m ashamed to check “Caucasian” in the race box on the census form: There should be a category for people who wish to be known simply as members of the human race.

Maureen Dobbins

Thousand Oaks, Calif.

To the Editor:

Regarding Benjamin Schwarz’s review of “Without Sanctuary,” the crime of rape did not exist, in the fact of forced sexual intercourse perpetrated by a white male upon a black female. This fact was not called rape, but rather, “rewarding payment received from a master well served”! The concept of rape involving a black male and white woman had little to do with the fact of actual sexual intercourse, but rather with the fact of the touching of a hand, or of any other part of the white female body--even by accident. It was construed as legal rape, upon a white person’s accusation, male or female. A black slave, after being beaten by his white mistress, was often hung or shot for touching her in his futile attempt to grab the whip from her grasp.

Schwarz often quotes from W.E.B Du Bois, who wrote for white people only. Ninety-nine percent of the black population could not read English at the time. Du Bois had to be very careful not to offend the “White Establishment,” which had few “Liberals”--those being defined as whites who preferred guns, as opposed to ropes for the killing of blacks. The touching of the white body was construed as rape, even if the black man’s transgression was accidental, and the white person was a homosexual, a fact that neither Du Bois nor anyone else addressed.

The fact of recorded lynching is a very deceptive minefield, in that most murders of blacks were not recorded or published.

Lucius G. Johnson

Pomona, Calif.

To the Editor:

I find it hard to believe that Benjamin Schwarz attempted to defend the motives behind the lynching era of the United States.

In his critique of “Without Sanctuary,” he implied that lynchings were greatly justified actions brought on the African-American communities because of crime sprees. Of course there was black crime in that period, but does he believe that it was at some epidemic level to justify vigilante response of this magnitude?

As far as the black-lynching-black phenomena, sometimes the community would have to act on their own to sacrifice one person in order to avoid many suffering for the actions or even perceived actions of one. Most of the blacks in the South lived in fear of undeserved punishment.

Schwarz opened and closed his article trying to minimize what is very apparent in pictures that depict the history of lynching. Look at the picture again of Frank Embree. You will see that the purpose is not to have justice but to totally humiliate the person. There was no purpose in making him parade naked. Also, look at the many scars on his body. Those scars don’t look new. Those scars speak to the mental and emotional scars that many black men of the time carried around.

Schwarz, look at those pictures again and you will see in many cases the participants were enjoying themselves. Could you cut a man’s ear or his finger off? Think about it.

Pastor Randall E. Jordan

Lake Forest, Calif.

To the Editor:

The purportedly objective review by Benjamin Schwarz evoked emotions of disgust and revulsion in this reader. Virtually the entire polemic was devoted to the reviewer’s apparent view that in multitudes of instances, one can safely and honestly “blame the victims.” It was, we are told, the “floaters” and lone wandering black males, strangely predisposed to crime, who were quite understandably made the objects of torture and murder.

Clearly Schwarz has spent little if any time in the deep South. If he has been there at any time in the last 50 years, he cannot but have seen for himself the extraordinary degree to which blacks were abused by the white power structure in every conceivable aspect of their lives. Murder of blacks who were perceived as sexual threats due to a wave or a smile was but the ultimate obscenity.

The assertion by Schwarz that increased and endemic black criminality was fundamental to and indeed among causes of thousands of such murders clearly illustrates what is at the least a warped and perverted view. Even those whose actions may have contributed to their horrible demise were entitled to due process of law and any suggestion to the contrary smacks of a racism the ultimate sadness of which would seem to emanate from the reviewer’s own strange lack of awareness. Perhaps saddest of all were the gratuitous references and random out-of-context quotes of W.E.B Du Bois, who must at this moment be straining the bonds of death in an attempt to respond.

I refer Schwarz to the works of Du Bois such as “The Souls of Black Folk” for a fairer and broader understanding of this great American. If, as I suspect, Benjamin Schwarz has already read it, then he should be ashamed of claiming support from Du Bois in his “blame the victim” tirade. I wonder what the mother and child, hanging together under a bridge as depicted in the book, did to require their punishment.

Richard G. Berry

Manhattan Beach, Calif.

To the Editor:

I really enjoy the bold essay-reviews you publish in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Most recently, Benjamin Schwarz’s review of “Without Sanctuary” was extremely well done. It is good to see there is still some intelligence left in this age of superficiality.

Mark Barna

Long Beach, Calif.

To the Editor:

What were you thinking! Two stories on death--lynching and capital punishment. Great articles and very informative. But good grief: Happy Valentine’s Day. I do enjoy the Book Review. Keep up the good work.

Barbara Collins

Los Angeles, Calif.

Benjamin Schwarz replies:

I’m saddened and somewhat surprised by the reaction to my review, and I hope that those who haven’t yet read it will do so [www.calendarlive.com/lynching], rather than base their understanding on its mischaracterization in some of these letters.

The point of my piece, as I emphasized throughout, wasn’t to justify lynching in any way; rather, it was to show, as I repeatedly stressed, that among the most monstrous results of Southern white racism was the way in which it engendered pathologies among some of those who were oppressed, to which some whites then responded with further, and far more savage, oppression.

To answer the letters point-by-point: Pamela Branch’s charge that I’ve failed to consider the discrimination suffered by Southern blacks ignores the entire thrust of my piece, which was precisely that this discrimination was at the root of the rise in Southern black criminality. (She also, by the way, misunderstands Reconstruction, which was in fact the federal government’s effort to extend and protect Southern blacks’ political and economic power, rather than “rob” them of it. Perhaps she is referring to the period after Reconstruction, which white Southerners called “Redemption.”)

Tonye Allen’s heated response ignores my repeated contention that lynching was barbaric and sadistic. Lucius Johnson conflates the period of slavery with the “lynching era,” which began in the late 1880s, after slavery (and Reconstruction). He’s certainly correct that female slaves were sexually exploited by whites, but his characterization of the legal definition of rape in the lynching era is erroneous. The murder of Southern blacks by whites and blacks by means other than lynching was sometimes unrecorded. But lynching was another matter, because it was intended to be a public event. Most important, I don’t see how anyone who has read W.E.B. Du Bois could describe him in the terms Johnson uses.

Contrary to Randall Jordan’s assertions, throughout my essay I strongly stated that the fact or appearance of Southern black criminality in no way justified lynching. Jordan is wrong about the motivation behind Southern blacks lynching other Southern blacks: These actions were a response to alleged transgressions inflicted on members of the black community by the lynching victims. Finally, it’s clear from my piece that I’m as horrified by the sadism of lynchers as is Jordan; indeed, he gathers the instances of cruelty he cites from my review.

In asserting that my review “blame[s] the victims,” Richard Berry fundamentally misunderstands my argument. I unequivocally assert that those who’ve blamed the victims have held to an “indefensible position.” In suggesting that I don’t believe that all victims of lynching were entitled to due process, he seems to have willfully misread my piece, because I say specifically that no victim “was found guilty by properly constituted authorities (whose ability to carry out justice was suspect at best).” I wrote repeatedly that lynching was “barbaric and criminal.” Contrary to his claim, I have in fact spent considerable time in the deep South, during some of which I’ve chronicled the injustices and inequities some blacks there still endure. In misunderstanding my position, Berry also misunderstands Du Bois--and none of my quotations from Du Bois are taken out of context. If Berry were as familiar with Du Bois’ work as he suggests, he would recognize that in fact all my quotations from Du Bois are from the very work to which he refers--”The Souls of Black Folk.”