June 2023 - “National Memorial to Peace and Justice"
Three security cars, each with a uniformed guard, were spaced around the perimeter of the National Memorial to Peace and Justice. Initially it struck me as odd, given dawn’s empty stillness on my first morning in Montgomery, Alabama. Then, of course, I thought: extremist violence is always potential today, especially for those who tell the truth about racism in America. The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) tells the truth.
The truth that Bryan Stevenson, EJI’s founder, wants to tell includes much inspiration, thank goodness. How else could a memorial to the victims of lynching attract folks from around the nation to view 800 six-foot steel monuments, each representing a county where race-based murder occurred, each etched with the names of those tortured and killed. Entering the six-acre site that morning, I silently thank Stevenson for his commitment to peace and justice for which this memorial was named.
“No food or drink, no running, and no selfies,” the security guard told us as we passed through metal detectors. “No selfies?” I wondered, a question quickly buried by an obvious, horrific truth: a century ago postcards were sold as souvenirs, smiling white faces posing for the camera before gruesome backdrops of victims hung from trees. I was ashamed of my fleeting intention to click a selfie standing by a steel slab. “This is a sacred space,” the security guard emphasized. Yes, I thought, this place is for pilgrims, not tourists.
Greeting us first in this space are six chained figures, one with a babe in arms, created by Ghanaian sculptor Kwame Akoto-Bamfo. Their faces convey the horror of enslavement – agony, grief, despair, resignation. Different types of body marks and hairstyle indicated that those depicted were from diverse backgrounds and regions. Akoto-Bamfo wanted you to know that none were free from slavery. He wanted white people to see the figures “as human beings and not black people.” The combination of universality and realism conveyed our shared humanity with those forced onto, what he called, “the path that leads to lynching.”
Continuing along the path through the memorial, a slight uphill brings me to the steel memorials. Here they are mounted near ground level, forcing me to weave through them while reading the names of the victims. We need to know and speak these names - such as Elias Clayton, Isaac McGhie, and Elmer Jackson, lynched by a mob of 10,000 people in 1920 and not the south, but in Duluth, Minnesota. It was another reminder that violent racism happens throughout our country. As I walk down a slight incline, the steel monuments seem to rise above me. I look up and sigh.
This terrible history is seared into my heart, which is why I’m so grateful for the healing and dignity reflected in the memorial. Stevenson managed to portray our darkest moments while simultaneously shedding light on our path forward. As he counseled, “Our nation’s history of racial injustice casts a shadow across the American landscape. This shadow cannot be lifted until we shine the light of truth on the destructive violence that shaped our nation, traumatized people of color, and compromised our commitment to the rule of law and to equal justice.”
Further action:
1) Find out if you live in a county where documented lynchings took place. If you do, make sure you have a plaque similar to one depicted below which memorializes the site. See the Community Remembrance Project for more information.
2) Support the website of Ghanaian sculptor Kwame Akoto-Bamfo. Connect the realities of racism and western imperialism to the devastation of the African continent by the west. Akoto-Bamfo, denied a visa to visit the site where his statue now stands, had the final sculpture shipped from Africa across the same waters which carried enslaved Africans. The shackles used in this exhibition were replicated from real chains found at the Cape Coast Slave Castle.
3) Debunk the myth that lynchings were merely spontaneous outbursts by angry people. The whole system, including police and government officials, allowed such extralegal violence to occur. Only one percent of lynchings committed after 1900 led to a criminal conviction. According to the Equal Justice Institute, “State officials’ tolerance of lynchings created enduring national and institutional wounds that have not yet healed. Lynchings occurred in communities where African Americans today remain marginalized, disproportionally poor, overrepresented in prisons and jails, and underrepresented in decision-making roles in the criminal justice system.”
4) As you work for justice, carry with you the wisdom and compassion demonstrated by Bryan Stevenson by acknowledging how racism damages everyone on all sides. These words were etched on the memorial: “White people who witnessed, participated in, and socialized their children in a culture that tolerated gruesome lynchings also were psychologically damaged.”
5) Understand the overlap between anti-racism and the labor movement. Despite the fact that President Roosevelt encouraged workers to join unions, Black sharecroppers in Lowndes County who tried to organize were thrown out of their houses and terrorized in tent cities they created. As one plaque at the Memorial explained, “Ed Bracy, G. Smith Watkins, and Jim Press Meriweather were lynched in1935 for working to organize a union among sharecroppers in Lowndes County, Alabama.”
6) Appreciate how art, whether in the form of a curated space or a poem, can fuse terrifying reality with inspiring hope. The memorial did so, as did Tony Morrison’s words etched on the boundary wall of the Memorial site: “…and o my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck un-noosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they just as soon slop for hogs you go to love them. The dark, dark liver – love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”
7) Offer to friends who don’t know much about the story of lynching in America this blog, along with my fifteenth blog from April 9, 2019, “Remembering Lynching Victims at Memorial Square”