withoutsanctuary.org

[rafter]

I first visited this site as a 13 year old 8th grader as a suggestion to my english teacher to see "black history" in the eyes of the everyday black person in the south in the post-reconstruction era, and was haunted by the images that were on this site. I had always known that this was the fate of many African Americans, the people of which I descend, in the south, but never had I had a visual record to pair to the many stories I had heard while growing up.
Now, a 20 year old college junior, visiting the site as an assignment for my US History class, I realized that, even in my maturing, the images are still a painstaking reminder of the disregard for the Black life in the south. I often wonder what would make someone torture and kill the mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters of people...and the only reason I couldn't gather a plausible explination.
Being a Black man, I too wonder would this had been my fate, if I were born in the time of lynch mobs and Jim Crow, but its something that I admit that, I can not ponder to long without feeling fear.
Without sanctuary is such a fitting name for this site, as it explains the reality of the lives any many blacks at this time and if I am to be totally honest, the reality of many blacks today. Although a lynching today would be unfathomable, there are definitely things today which would counter, the grave injustices of blacks.