Learning From History, Unedited
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Although I can understand, in principle, the reason why Ken Gonzales-Day edited the lynching photo, I feel that a kind of travesty has happened (“Franklin Avenue [1920],” Photo Synthesis, by Colin Westerbeck, March 4).
If editors “fixed” the thousands of photos showing the millions of bodies of people who were murdered in the death camps during World War II, there would be an outcry from people who would say that the truth was being buried.
The lynching photos, however repugnant and horrible, signify an important time in America’s history. To clean them up is to show future generations that people were never murdered in the past (and today in the gang-infested neighborhoods) just for the color of their skin.
History is often bloody and violent. If we are lucky, some of us learn from the past and help the children of today avoid the pitfalls of the ubiquitous term “it never happened.”
Dori Sahagian
Tujunga
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