One panel features a 1930s photograph of a lynching of a black man in Indiana offset by an Angus cow hanging by its feet at a slaughterhouse.
Next to it, another installment drops the mouths of onlookers as their eyes move from a picture of a burning black corpse from a 1919 race riot to the corresponding image, that of a rooster set on fire.
Continuing along the Animal Liberation Project, an exhibition recently launched by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), there are pictures of black men and women being branded, bloodied and burned, contrasting with shots of various domesticated animals in similar positions.
One of the most provocative images, however, is that of an African-American’s chained foot opposite the equally shackled limb of a circus elephant.
Eloquent quotes from civil-rights leaders, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., highlight the 11-panel display, which was recently featured on the historic New Haven Green, opposite a memorial to the slave-trading schooner Amistad, in the Connecticut city.
Though King probably never envisaged his words appearing billboard-size for animal rights, the phrase “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” appears at the end of PETA’s most recent contentious campaign, touring the country indefinitely — or until every local NAACP chapter pushes for its removal from their downtowns, as New Haven’s chapter did.
The acronym PETA goes hand-in-hand with controversy, but after the animal-rights organization came under fire for narrowly avoiding a racial uprising during its Aug. 8 New Haven showing, it looked as if PETA might back down from its latest stomach-churning, if not thought-provoking, ad campaign.
Locally, yes, but nationwide, not a chance.
One month after suspending the New Haven display comparing animal cruelty to slavery, PETA has resumed its traveling show on the West Coast. The exhibit is now making stops in Washington state. The Animal Liberation Project (peta.org/animalliberation) — with more photographs featuring such imagery as starving cows being shepherded into a rancher’s pen, next to a picture of thousands of slaves being herded off a ship — has earned official condemnation from the NAACP, offended other minority communities across the country and affronted its own allies in the animal-rights movement.
“While African-Americans have been systematically degraded by being compared with nonhuman beings, are we to think that angry responses to the pairing of man and monkey were unanticipated?” said Lee Hall, director of Friends of Animals.The NAACP followed with an equally forceful pronouncement.
“Animal rights is a good cause, but get it out there straight up. Do not exploit us to get your issue out there,” said Scot X. Esdiale, president of the NAACP’s Connecticut branch. “We were used like animals to build this country for free; the comparison of black rights with animal rights is not a good one.”
A vow not to back down
PETA disagrees with both. PETA’s president, Ingrid Newkirk, says the organization will not back down.
“Though we have not received support from the NAACP, it and other civil-rights groups support the creation of slave museums and exhibits that show graphic images of past cruelty because they want us to remember,” she said in a statement. “We also want society to remember and to learn from our past rather than repeat the same cruel deeds, but with a new set of victims.
“I would fail in my duty if I allowed this exhibit to disappear from sight because of anger on the part of those who cannot or will not look beyond their own pain to the pain of others who need help today.”
In the works for a number of years and inspired by the writings of Princeton Professor Peter Singer, the exhibit is supported by several prominent black leaders, such as civil-rights-turned-PETA activist Dick Gregory, who marched with King, and author Alice Walker.
PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich says PETA intends to bring the Animal Liberation Project across America. “When we’re done with all 50 states, we’ll move on to universities.”
Though a survey of media outlets shows less outrage about the Animal Liberation Project than 2003’s Holocaust on Your Plate campaign, a 60-panel exhibit that directly compared farm-animal slaughter to the extermination of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, the New Haven NAACP chapter acted swiftly when it heard of the display.
Friedrich says the New Haven protest resulted from one offended observer calling the local NAACP to suggest the organization should “be upset too.” But Esdiale disputes that, saying the situation on the green “was complete chaos.”
“Everyone was yelling and screaming,” he says, “and police were trying to control a situation getting out of hand.
“I told PETA if they didn’t take it down, we were going to take it down ourselves.”
PETA disassembled the exhibit in about 15 minutes, he adds, as corroborated by local news accounts.
PETA says it expects more objections as the exhibit makes it way across the United States.
Meanwhile, PETA-watchers continue to scratch their heads in bewilderment and wonder how much further the line will stretch.
“When I got the call about the exhibit in New Haven, I said, ‘What you’re telling me cannot be true,’ ” says Esdiale. “I had heard about the Anti-Defamation League’s problems with the other campaign, but I hadn’t done the research. I asked 10 black people down there about [the exhibit], and 10 black people said, ‘This isn’t right. This mind-set, it’s crazy.’ “
