Giddap
Hale Woodruff, American, 1900 - 1980
1935, printed 1996 (posthumously)
Linocut on wove Lana Royal Crown paper
36/300 (Estate edition, 1996)
Image: 12 × 9 1/16 in. (30.5 × 23 cm)
Sheet: 19 1/8 × 14 15/16 in. (48.6 × 38 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Class of 1935 Memorial Fund
2015.11.5
Portfolio / Series Title
Selections from the Atlanta Period, 1931-1946
Printer
Robert Blackburn Workshop, New York (Rober Blackburn, American, 1920-2003)
Publisher
Elnora, Inc., Estate of Hall Woodruff
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
20th century
Object Name
Research Area
Not on view
Inscriptions
Signed, lower right, in blind stamp: © Hale Woodruff; blind-stamped, lower left: [symbol for printer, Robert Blackburn]; numbered, in graphite, lower left: 36/300 Watermark in paper lower left: NA [crown] PUR FIL; watermark in paper lower right: LAN
Label
This linocut, titled Giddap—an interjection used to make a horse go faster—depicts the moment before a horse receives a whip and a yell. A Black man, held in place by a noose, will die by hanging the moment the horse pulls the cart away. A group of White men and women stand around cheering the lynching. The print visually evokes the 3,381 lynchings of African Americans between 1882 and 1935 (the year the print was made) across the United States. It was first shown at a 1935 art exhibition sponsored by the NAACP to help raise awareness and support for an anti-lynching bill that had been put before Congress in 1934. A version of the bill finally passed in 2022.
From the 2026 exhibition Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, curated by Amelia Kahl (Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming) and Alisa Swindell (Associate Curator of Photography)
Course History
AAAS 7.05, Imagining Black Freedom in America since the Civil War, Julie Rabig, Spring 2020
Art History 40.02, The American Century, Mary Coffey, Spring 2025
Art History 40.02, The American Century, Mary Coffey, Spring 2025
Exhibition History
Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, Jaffe and Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 20, 2025 - July 11, 2026.
Provenance
Charles M. Young Fine Prints and Drawings, Portland, Connecticut; sold to present collection, 2015.
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