The photos in this exhibit are harrowing. There are dozens of images of tortured, often mutilated, black bodies dangling from branches while below them, crowds of whites grin and pose for the camera. Lynching postcards were popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. People smiled and waved beneath the corpses of African-Americans, sometimes holding pieces of the victim's clothing or body. They sent the postcards through the mail with breezy, casual greetings inscribed on the back.

Charles H. Wright Museum President Christy Coleman first saw the exhibit in New York four years ago. She says she knew then that she had to bring it to Detroit in hopes that it might help heal old wounds.

The gut reaction would say, well, something like this will just enrage people further and that has not been the experience, even in its showing in its Southern venues where the majority of these crimes took place. It has been a completely opposite reaction.

Coleman says the exhibit has a cathartic effect for many people. She says it forces visitors to confront the end result of racism and hatred, and talk about how to prevent such killings from happening again.

But she ran into a stumbling block when she contacted the collector of the photos, James Allen. She says Allen is very careful about choosing venues for the show.

He wanted to make sure that it was going to be in a place where it could really spark dialogue serious, open dialogue.

Allen spent 15 years collecting the photos. In the narration for a short movie on the exhibit, he says the first postcard he found was a picture of Leo Frank, a Jewish man lynched in Georgia for a murder he did not commit.

It wasn't the corpse that bewildered me as much as the canine thin faces of the pack, lingering in the woods, circling after the kill.

This exhibit focuses particularly on the perpetrators, without losing any respect or compassion for the victims. Allen felt it was time to spark discussion about what drives people to violence what transforms a crowd into a mob. And especially, what made these people want to keep photographic souvenirs of the killings.

Lust propelled the commercial reproduction and distribution of the images, facilitating the endless replay of anguish. Even dead, the victims were without sanctuary.

The museum is projecting that 70 thousand people will see the exhibit during the eight months that it remains in Detroit. Christy Coleman says it is one of the many efforts the museum is engaged in to improve its financial condition.

The exhibit Without Sanctuary will be at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History through February of 2005. I'm Celeste Headlee. © Copyright 2012, wdetfm