ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, an exhibition of lynching photographs from the James Allen and John Littlefield collection that took place at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta in 2002. African American melancholia is a means of melding activism and spiritual reckoning. Considering productive acts of redemption in the context of African American melancholia makes the spiritual dimension of reclaiming lynching photography more visible. Indeed, the processes of African American melancholia traditionally have grown out of the opposite of power: oppression. African American melancholia is the unlikely antidote to “wounded attachment” because it demands acts of remembrance and recognizes those as a form of resistance. Without Sanctuary was for many African Americans a moment of reckoning. Curators took huge risks, however, in choosing African American cultural frames that could evoke the reverential and emotional participation associated with African American funeral rites in those visitors who were familiar with them.