This postcard, addressed to Dr. J. W. F. Williams in
Kentucky, is somewhat hard to understand through its faded sepia tone. It shows a very large crowd in a main
commercial area in downtown Dallas in 1910.
In the back of the photo is Elk’s Arch, a very tall arch in the town
square, with Allen Brooks, formerly an esteemed servant for the Buven’s family,
hanging from the top. What is particularly disturbing about this
picture, is that this crowd is gathered to watch this gruesome event of a
naked, elderly man’s lynching, and they are simply enjoying their lunch break,
taking souvenirs and writing home about it.
Brooks was accused vaguely, and almost certainly wrongfully,
of assaulting the Buven family’s young daughter. One violent mob attempted but failed to
attack him and take him from the authorities.
However they tried again while he was on trial, this time a crowd of
almost 200 whites, and succeeded, overwhelming the courtroom’s fifty armed
deputies and twenty policemen. Brooks
was trapped and while no shots were fired, a noose was hung around his neck and
he was thrown from an upper floor down to the mob below who attacked
ruthlessly. From contact with the
pavement and horrifying attackers, he was soon almost naked and extremely beat
up, when he slowly ascended from the pavement to the top of the arch on a rope,
onlookers stripped the rest of his clothing off for souvenirs.
What makes all of this even more despicable is the fact that
the lynch mob, the attackers, the law enforcement, and the spectators all
thought this was god’s work, that they were cherishing and protecting “purity
and innocence.” The postcard
nonchalantly says the writer was on his lunch hour, and was “very much a part
of the bunch.” This lighthearted tone
and apparent excitement at the spectacle is a gross and, sadly, extremely
representative snapshot of American culture in this era. Though we have thankfully progressed past
this version of overt, dehumanizing racial violence, our society has simply
replaced it with a more subtle and insidious, though no less present, version
of the same racial violence, gross public spectacle, and objectification of
black bodies.
<http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html, photograph 7>
