MS01.03.03.B07.F02.0078

[B&W PHOTO ILLUSTRATION OF A PIECE OF SCULPTURE]

[CAPTION]

Don’t Forget, 1979, steel, 11 x 7 x 6" (not in exhibition)

A lynching is a murder, a group murder. You take all of the energy of a
lynching,
all the hate and all the fear, and pile it on one human being. You tie that
person to a tree and
you slowly or fastly kill him. The Lynch Fragment series is a series of
sculpture ideas.
What I’m doing is taking fragments of the intensity of a lynching, turning
it around,
changing it into an object, and making that object something creative
and positive. So
the thing itself is not to look like its [it's] been lynched, but to have that
scale of intensity, and
that kind of power.

I started making them in 1963 during the period when the civil rights
movement was
in full force. I intended for the Lynch Fragments to remind black people
of what we have
come out of. That’s important because in the United States we’re the only
people to
actually come out of the lynching experience. They lynched a few other
people, but basically
being lynched belonged to us. We were the only ones brought here to be
slaves, and
after slavery we were a people without rights. We were the only people
who could be
lynched with impunity. It’s documented and it’s not over yet. Making
the Lynch Fragments
is a strong way to work.

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