This book traces the lineage of humane insight and spectacles of black suffering and death in the past century and a half, from the abolitionist movement to the murder of Emmett Tilland and the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Humane insight refers to a kind of looking in which the onlooker's ethics are addressed by the spectacle of others' embodied suffering. It is an ethics- based look that turns a benevolent eye, recognizes violations of human dignity, and bestows or articulates the desire for actual protection. This book investigates incidents in African American visual culture that depend upon the recognition of humanity as an elemental component of human identity to be sought and secured. It examines how the image of the mortal, wounded, and dead black body grounds a politics of racial equity and justice in the language of pathos. By focusing on how pain and even death among African Americans are rendered discussable, the book reveals how black pain has been made to make sense.