Reminders of a cruel past

First the gospel. Now the blues.

The first two acquisitions for Atlanta’s Center for Civil and Human Rights bear witness to the inspiring side of the struggle: the Martin Luther King Jr. papers and a series of Benny Andrews paintings depicting the life of John Lewis.

The third acquisition deals with a disturbing side. The center is purchasing “Without Sanctuary,” the collection of lynching images that drew 176,000 visitors to an exhibition at the King National Historic Site in 2002.

“We wanted to make sure we were telling the complete story —- the horrible as well as the uplifting,” says Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin. “We don’t want this to be a theme park.”

Since plans for the center were announced two years ago, a panel of two dozen academics, museum experts, media professionals and civil rights leaders have deliberated over its content. The planners will unveil their proposals at two public meetings Oct. 29-30.

“We wanted to build it from the inside out,” says Doug Shipman, executive director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights Partnership, the city-sanctioned group developing the project near Centennial Olympic Park. “This is a first draft. We know it will evolve.”

So far, the center has raised almost half of the $125 million cost. Groundbreaking is scheduled for next year. Acquisition of the lynching collection shows the content planners want to cast a wider net than the civil rights era —- and aren’t shying away from controversy.

“You want something that will jar people,” says Georgia State University historian Cliff Kuhn, co-chairman of the panel. “You don’t want it to be just celebratory.”

There’s nothing celebratory about “Without Sanctuary.” The one-of-a-kind collection consists of more than 225 photos and postcards and 11 boxes of letters, newspapers, books and other documentary materials. Almost 5,000 Americans were lynched in the United States from the 1870s to the 1970s; 80 percent of the victims were in the South, almost all of them black.

The collection, built by two white Georgians, was almost sold to a university in New York. The deal to keep it in the South was clinched by a phone call from the mayor, who took a personal interest in the subject.

As it turned out, Franklin had purchased some lynching photos herself.

Ghostly images

James Allen was pleased early last year when he heard the center was interested in his lynching collection. Pleased, but skeptical.

“I had learned to be wary because of my experiences trying to show these photos in Atlanta,” he says.

Allen, an antiques dealer originally from Florida, started collecting the images more than 15 years ago with his partner, John Littlefield. The photos and postcards were made as souvenirs in the days when festive crowds came out to see vigilante justice applied to people accused of anything from murder to sassing white folks. The ghostly images of charred and dangling corpses obsessed Allen. He came to see them as a blunt instrument for starting a discussion about race in America.

The collection was first exhibited in 2000 in New York, where it attracted international media attention. Allen always wanted to show it in the South, especially in Atlanta, where he and Littlefield lived at the time. He thought he had a deal with the Atlanta History Center, but the institution grew squeamish about exhibiting such troublesome material on its Buckhead campus.

“Jimmy felt like they broke their promise,” says Frank Catroppa, then superintendent of the King National Historic Site.

Catroppa volunteered to host an exhibition in the site’s visitors center on Auburn Avenue, across from the King tomb. The show —- co-sponsored by Emory University —- drew large crowds and an emotional outpouring. On its last day, the mayor came with her mother.

“It was very sad and moving,” Franklin remembers. “I was struck by the diverse group of people there. I thought that was the kind of thing we needed at the center.”

After the exhibition closed, “Without Sanctuary” moved on to Jackson, Miss.; Marseille, France; Detroit and Chicago. But people in Atlanta never forgot about it. When the civil rights center went public in late 2006, Catroppa, part of the planning group, suggested buying the collection.

Shipman was hesitant at first. “I wasn’t sure it was a good fit,” he says.

But he soon warmed to the idea as a way to dramatize the racial violence the civil rights movement had to overcome.

In February 2007, he and Catroppa visited Allen on the Georgia coast, where he had moved with Littlefield, to inspect the gruesome photos scattered across the rooms of their fishing house. As the Atlantans were getting ready to leave, Allen mentioned that while he wanted the collection to stay in the South, he was considering selling it to Cornell University in New York.

Shipman asked him to wait. A few weeks later, the mayor phoned and assured Allen the center would be built and would prominently display the photos.

That was all he needed to hear.

The acquisition is being funded by private donors who want to remain anonymous. None of the parties will confirm the price, but they say it’s close to the $1 million Allen and Littlefield have been offered before.

The collection is being stored at the Atlanta History Center —- an irony not lost on Allen.

He laughs softly. “I won’t be able to say Atlanta isn’t willing to confront its racist past anymore.”

‘Difficult material’

Now that the center owns the lynching collection, it faces the delicate question of how to use it.

“It’s very difficult material,” Shipman concedes. “There’s a danger that some folks won’t be able to process it because it’s just so brutal. But it’s all in the presentation. Holocaust museums have showed us that you can deal with some horrible things and open conversations.”

The task of presentation will fall to the exhibit designers, Gallagher & Associates, a Bethesda, Md., studio known for its work on the International Spy Museum in Washington. It will be working from a blueprint developed by the content council, which proposes to divide the story into three chapters:

—- The Revolution through World War II (1776-1945), when America’s promise of freedom and equality for all went unfulfilled for almost two centuries.

—- The civil rights era (1946-1970), when black Americans pressed their claims against the backdrop of a world shedding colonialism.

—- The modern era (1970- ), when other groups from women to gays to Hispanics campaigned for their rights.

The lynching photos —- only a portion of which would be displayed at any time —- would anchor the first chapter.

Not everyone is pleased with their inclusion.

“I’m not clear on the purpose of showing these pictures,” says C.T. Vivian, an Atlanta civil rights veteran and member of the content council. “Martin King is the centerpiece of this thing. I would prefer we concentrate on his message.”

But Lonnie King, another civil rights leader on the panel (and no relation to the King family), doesn’t see the two as exclusive. “I think those pictures are as important as the King papers,” he says. “They show the mindset the movement had to fight against. These people were having picnics while people were getting lynched.”

Mayor Franklin never doubted that lynching pictures belong in the center. In fact, she plans to donate a couple she bought at an antique show in Atlanta years ago. She keeps them in an old chest at home and has never displayed them.

“People ask me why I bought those pictures,” she says. “It’s because I just didn’t want anyone else to own them.”

Now Atlanta can say the same about “Without Sanctuary.”