(jazzy piano music)
- [Beth] We're in the Georgia Museum of Art,
looking at a painting by Virtus Hayes, "The Lynchers"
and it dates from the 1930s.
And as soon as we read the title, we conjure an image,
at least I do, of the terrible violence of a lynching.
- [Shawnya] And the violence would be perpetrated against
African-Americans for basically no reason,
other than pure hatred.
- [Beth] Minor infractions,
looking at someone the wrong way,
crossing the street the wrong way,
white fears of interracial sex.
And the purpose of lynching was to terrorize communities
and to keep them under control.
- [Shawnya] The largest body of individuals impacted
were African-American males.
And that can resonate with the contemporary era.
- [Beth] So we're talking about public acts
of violence and torture that took place
in front of, often, large crowds of people.
- [Shawnya] And in actuality, many of these
were documented by the perpetrators themselves.
They would photograph a person that was hung
or burned and through postcards.
And so this painting is interesting
because it doesn't show the victim,
but it does show many of the perpetrators
in many ways that resemble those early photographs.
- [Beth] The photographs would have the victim
and those who witnessed and perpetrated the violence,
but here the victim is missing
and we're focusing entirely on the crowd.
And my mind does go to those photographs.
And then I come back and the nonchalance that I see
in some of these figures, it feels almost unbelievable.
- [Shawnya] It's everything from indifference,
where some people have their eyes on the actual scene
in a very intense way.
There's a smugness, but what's interesting
are the children in the front.
Having children at an event like this, that is so violent,
it makes it especially heinous.
A young girl who is still holding a doll,
staring at this scene which is so graphic.
And then a young boy who actually is looking down.
So you wonder if there's a little bit of an aversion
to what he's seeing or a little bit of reflection
that this is not something good.
- [Beth] The oldest figure who's holding onto his suspenders
and has a rifle in his hand, looks very much to me
like the kinds of people we see in the photographs;
proud of what he's doing.
He wants someone to photograph him,
to show him doing this because he believes
in the righteousness of what the crowd is doing.
And then the figure next to him who lights a cigarette.
There's something very casual and every day about that.
And then the figure who he's in conversation with
seems to be loading his gun.
- [Shawnya] The implication of violence,
whether it be in the form of a rifle, a pistol,
the suggestion of burning a victim
with the cigarette lighter is really haunting as well.
We get a sense of this mob mentality
that it isn't just these three central figures,
but there are all these figures in the background,
whether they seem more anonymous,
their eyes are non-distinct,
they become this lump and mob of figures.
- [Beth] It's as if the artist is showing us
all the different kinds of people
who took part in lynchings.
From the man who wears the black hat
to the figure in suspenders.
So there seem to be generations
and people from different classes
who have united in this act.
- [Shawnya] Interestingly enough, the artist,
who was born in Atlanta, left the south
in part because of the threat of lynchings.
And he would have created this after he had lived
and worked as a muralist in New York.
And moving from these affirming images
of African-Americans and the Harlem hospital murals
to ones that tackled such hard subjects as lynching.
It showed the range of issues in the 1930s.
- [Beth] And here, the perpetrators are very close to us.
- [Shawnya] The interesting anecdote about this painting
is that there was another title, possibly, "The Victims",
which one could argue it's not only the victims
that we don't see, but the victims that these people
would become, violent acts have an impact on them negatively
and through generations, as implied by the children.
- [Beth] Witnessing that level of violence
is a traumatic experience.
It can lead to people feeling less empathy.
- [Shawnya] The fact that we can still look at
a painting like this and it haunts us,
reminds us of where we've been,
but also where we are and where we need to be
in terms of levels of empathy and tolerance in this country.
(jazzy piano music)