Erased Lynching Analysis

Erased Lynching by Ken Gonzales-Day presents lynching photographs, but removes the victim and the rope from the image summoning viewers to complete the picture in our imagination. This is meant to “redirect the viewer’s attention away from the lifeless body of the lynch victim and allow viewers to see the crowd, the mechanism of the spectacle.” The meaning and the power of each image resides not in what’s visible, but in what’s not: He seeks to change the usual focus of lynching (the victim) to that of the perpetrators and environment surrounding the event. It could be argued that an unintended side-effect seems to be erasing the victim's suffering. However, his work also reminds us of the power of time to erase history, in part because it …show more content…
Confederate monuments are placed to commemorate the ‘Lost Cause’, an attempt to preserve the ‘Southern’ way of life. In the twenty first century, lynching can seem like a distant and silenced memory that many have chosen to forget. However, descendants of victims and those affected by lynching do not have this luxury. Lynch mobs took great pride in capturing and documenting the events of a lynching in photographs and postcards, making it a publicly visible spectacle. Victims need to be made publicly visible once again, in the form of monuments, memorials or at very least, informational plaques to change the site of lynchings from an unmarked space to a place of awareness and …show more content…
Social amnesia and a reluctance to include the narratives of lynching in historical discourse has ensured that the trauma caused by these events still lingers in African American communities. The lack of public acknowledgement has proliferated the trauma of lynching for those affected. Museum exhibitions and memorials that present the collection of stories, histories and memories are an attempt to reverse this proliferation and alleviate the trauma still felt in the present day. Dwight and Alderman discuss the legacy of white superiority in the South, the silencing of the black experience and the way that memorials and museums are challenging this legacy and giving a voice to enslaved people, victims of racial terror, those involved in the Civil Rights Movement as well as ordinary people. Museums such as the Brooklyn Museum, the National Civil Rights Museum and the EJI Museum are prioritizing, commemorating and memorializing a history that has often been left out in favor of the public history of elite