On April 12, 2000, the British writer David Irving lost a libel suit against another historian who had called him a “Holocaust Denier.” Irving had written a book claiming that the mass genocide of Jews in Germany during World War II had been a complete hoax, and that Adolf Hitler had been unfairly vilified. People in the book industry watched this trial with interest, and we were all gratified when the judge in the case called Irving a racist whose distortions of the facts were “perverse and egregious.” We all consider ourselves defenders of free speech, but also servants to truth. The books we write, read, and publish are supposed to clarify our world, not create further darkness. “Truth” is a little word that always sounds like it is spoken in capital letters. The truth is that the Holocaust happened. It does no good and only great evil to deny it.  

Fear and denial. I sometimes think that these are the two most frightening words in the English language. Fear is what caused six million people to be massacred in Germany without protest. Denial is what we use to erase that event from history. I say “we,” because although the Holocaust is not this country’s cross to bear, we have our own history of fear and denial. There are dark periods in our past that most of us would prefer remained in darkness. The same year that a judge decided that David Irving’s book was “perverse,” one of these periods came horribly to light at the Ruth Horowitz Gallery on the Upper East Side of New York City.  A one of a kind (thank god) exhibition had just been mounted. Pinned against one bare wall in the main gallery room were a series of photographs—mostly postcard sized—of people hanging from trees and bridges; the first ever display of antique lynching photographs. The exhibit made the national news as it traveled the country (although not to the extent that the original photos did, as you will see)  and a book was published to accompany (I hesitate to use the word “commemorate”) the exhibition, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. 

I won’t lie to you—this is an awful book. The pictures are graphic and brutal. I am not a squeamish person by nature, but this book made me physically ill. It is the first and only book ever to have done so. In a way, the book is more difficult than the exhibition, because the reproduced photographs are so much larger than the originals—recreated with all the relentlessly accurate detail made possible by current technology and photographic restoration techniques. Without Sanctuary is a coffee table book that should never be on a coffee table. I used to keep the book on very high shelves and in the back room of my bookstore, so afraid was I to put it where children could put their hands on it.

But Without Sanctuary is also witness to the truth. Growing up as I did in New York State I always had a vague idea that lynching only occurred in the South, the actions of evil men in white hoods who murdered their victims under the cover of darkness. Not at all. The pictures in this book come from all over the country—including  New York. They are often taken, not in some dark night, but on bright, sunny days. And if it is hard to look at the black men hanging from the poles or trees, it is incomprehensible to see the rows of white people standing under them, posing, proud.

The original pictures were postcard sized because that is what they were-postcards. However far across the country the 2000 exhibition traveled, the photos on display had already traveled much farther. Many of them have cheerful notes to family and friends on the back.  Lynchings were public events, announced by notices posted in newspapers. It was common for people to be excused from work to attend.  An essay at the beginning of the book by Leon Litwack discusses the history of lynching in America.  Annotations at the end put names to the faces in the pictures, wherever the names are known. It is a photographic record of some of the worst moments in the history of the human race. 

Without Sanctuary was one of those books that, as a bookseller, I felt compelled to keep in stock. Not because I thought it would sell—I didn’t expect to sell a single copy. I kept it because like most booksellers I would balance the stock between what people wanted to read, and what I wanted them to read. I didn’t exactly want anyone to read Without Sanctuary; “want” isn’t the right word for it.  But I wanted people to know. I wanted people not to forget. And I wanted people to see the results of what happens when society acts out of fear and denial. I was pleased when customers would ask to see the book. In the end, I even sold one or two—to people, I suspect, like me—who couldn’t look at the horrors without feeling the compulsion to do something. Anything. Buying the book was a way to bear witness. Too little, too late, but at least these events will never be forgotten by me.

Books like Without Sanctuary are necessary because history repeats itself. Without these searing reminders of the consequences of hate, we grow complacent, lazy, and vulnerable. And lest anyone think that lynching is distant memory of a dark era, let me remind you about John William King, sentenced to death in 1999—not ten years ago—for the murder of James Byrd, Jr., who died while being dragged behind King’s pickup truck. 

In our post-9/11 world, our fear and denial have become fixed upon on another culture but the results are the frighteningly similar—injustice, cruelty, and violence carried out in the name of safety and security. I don’t ever want to be one of those people standing in the photo in a book like this one. I don’t want anyone I know—anyone I’ve ever even spoken to—to be a part of such a crowd, at such an event. It is scary to live in a country ruled by fear and denial. Such a country is, well, without sanctuary if you happen to be the wrong sort of person. We have all seen the photos of smiling soldiers standing over the bodies of prisoners, so clearly we are not as far from those dark pictures in my book as we would like to think.

“Terrorist” is a word we hear often these days. But it is hard to imagine anything more terrible than these orderly rows of men and women standing under a tree by a man they have just hanged, smiling for the camera.


Nicki Leone showed her proclivities early when as a young child she asked her parents if she could exchange the jewelry a well-meaning relative had given her for Christmas for a dictionary instead. She earned her B.A. in Russian and Middle Eastern History from Boston College, supporting her college career with a part-time job in a bookstore. Since then, she has been in and out of academic institutions, but has always managed to work with books no matter what. She began working for Bristol Books, an independent bookstore in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1993, and three years later became its manager, which is where she stayed for the next fifteen years. Currently she works for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, developing marketing and outreach programs for independent bookstores. Nicki is a book reviewer for several magazines, an occasional on-air book reviewer and commentator for the Wilmington public radio station WHQR, and a co-host on the television program “Let's Read” on UNCW. She is one of the founders of The Cape Fear Crime Festival, an annual book festival for mystery readers and writers, and currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers Network. She manages all this by the grace of a very patient partner and the loving support of two dogs and one-and-a-half cats. Contact Nicki Leone.