Column: 'Unmasked' will leave you uncomfortable, disturbed. As it should.
The NAACP's 1935 exhibition "An Art Commentary on Lynching" was intended to shock its audience with graphic images of racial violence and the horror of white supremacy, all in the effort to secure a federal anti-lynching bill.
One newspaper called it "bad for persons with weak hearts …"
Nine decades later, a reimagining of that exhibit — paired with a counter exhibition staged by the Communist Party of the United States of America at the IU South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center — merits an even stronger response.
As it should.
I write this as someone who approached "Unmasked: The Anti-Lynching Exhibits of 1935 and Community Remembrance in Indiana" with equal parts trepidation and curiosity. Someone who was prepared for an emotional response, who noted the advisory about "graphic images of racist violence, torture, and brutality, and examples of racist language." Someone who had grown up hearing stories about Emmett Till. Someone who knew that lynching happened not just in the South, but also right here in the heartland.
More: New exhibit reckons with Indiana's racial violence through anti-lynching art
Despite that knowledge, that awareness, I was still unprepared for the depth of my reaction to such works as "This is her first lynching," Reginald Marsh's depiction of a lynch mob, with a young white girl being lifted high so that she can see what's happening, from the NAACP exhibit. Or from the CPUSA exhibit, "American Justice/White Justice," a Joe Jones painting that portrays the aftermath of a lynching, with a noose dangling from a tree, a group of Klansman standing next to a burning house, the body of a half-naked Black woman in the foreground.
Alex Lichtenstein, one of the "Unmasked" curators who led the guided tour I took on Wednesday, acknowledged the obvious: "This is a difficult exhibit to see," said Lichtenstein, a professor of history and American studies at Indiana University Bloomington. He was speaking to a subdued group that was clearly still processing what they'd seen.
I write this not to discourage you from seeing the exhibit, which continues through Feb. 16. Rather, at a time when much of Black history — aka American history — is being denied or deemed too disturbing to be told, I write to encourage you to consider allowing yourself to be uncomfortable, to be disturbed by history, in this case, the history of lynching in this country — and in this state.
The NAACP and CPUSA exhibits show competing artistic responses to racial violence to achieve their common goal of ending lynching. Although CPUSA claimed its exhibit was less restrained and had more "fight" to it, the NAACP was actually the more graphic and violent of the two.
"Unmasked" also includes three sections focusing on the legacy of racial violence. "Those Left Behind" looks at the deep wounds suffered by the families and communities that had experienced a lynching. "Marion: The Appropriated Image" examines the wide circulation of a photograph of the Aug. 7, 1930, lynching of Abraham Smith and Thomas Shipp in Marion, Indiana. "Re-membering," the final section of the exhibit, focuses on communities that have sought to acknowledge painful aspects of their past by commemorating local lynching and other instances of racial terror. It highlights five such commemorations in Indiana.
For all the power of the images in the counter exhibitions, it is the Marion photo that will stay with me the longest, perhaps in part because it (and its re-appropriation by artists) represent the only photographic reproductions of a lynching in "Unmasked."
For me, it's the normalcy of the crowd of people who came to view the "event," some of them looking directly into the camera. From their expressions, their casual ease, they could have been gathered for a picnic, a county fair, an outdoor concert, not a double murder.
Finally: House makes lynching a federal crime, 65 years after Till
The photo has become an iconic image, circulated as "souvenirs'' and a statement of white supremacy, also utilized by anti-lynching activists and the Black press to protest lynchings.
Those protests fell on deaf ears for far too long, with a federal, comprehensive anti-lynching bill not arriving until 2022.
Newsweek described the NAACP exhibit as depicting brutality "in its most sickening form … no spoken or written argument … could be as hard hitting as this visual articulation."
Unmasking history can be disturbing and uncomfortable, but that's no excuse for failing to acknowledge it.
On exhibit
■ What: “Unmasked: The Anti-Lynching Exhibits of 1935 and Community Remembrance in Indiana”
■ Where: The Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center, 1040 W. Washington St., South Bend
■ When: through Feb. 16
■ Hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and 3 to 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays
■ Cost: free
■ For more information: Call 574-307-6135 or visit crhc.iusb.edu.
Alesia I. Redding is The Tribune's community engagement editor.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: 'Unmasked' exhibit reveals the history of lynching in America, Indiana
