Today, a new memorial is opening in Montgomery, Alabama. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is the first national memorial to the victims of lynching in the United States. The memorial was designed to face the Alabama state capital. The monument is made up of eight hundred steel blocks hanging from the ceiling, “bearing the names of 4,400 victims of one of the least-recognized racist atrocities in American history”.[1]
From 1882-1968 4,743 lynching’s occurred in the United States.[2]The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched. While these numbers seem large, there are certainly a greater number we do not know about. Many of the white people that were lynched were done so because they were trying to help the black or being anti lynching. Most lynching’s happened in the south; 79%.
In May 1918, the lynching of Mary Turner was investigated by Walter White who was sent by the NAACP. It began when an abusive plantation owner, Hampton Smith, was shot and killed. A manhunt resulted in the killing of Mary’s husband. Mary then denied her husband involvement with Smith’s killing. This resulted in a mob of several hundred people to kidnap her. The mob brought her to “Folsom Bridge. They tied her ankles, hung her upside down from a tree, threw gasoline on her and set her on fire. Turner was still alive when a member of the mob split her abdomen open with a knife and her unborn child fell on the ground. The baby was stomped on and crushed. Mary’s body was riddled with hundreds of bullets.”[3]I have never read something more disturbing or heartbreaking in my life.
This new memorial is dedicated as a space to “talk about all of that anguish”. The artist and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative also added 6 life-size sculptures of people in rusting shackles, including a mother with her baby. “It’s people in distress. And I do not think we’ve done a very good job at acknowledging the pain and agony, the suffering, the humiliation, the complete denial of humanity that slavery created for black people on this continent.”
The Memorial for Peace and Justice was created with hope of having a sober, meaningful site where people can gather and reflect on America’s history of racial inequality.[4]The artist EJI believed that by publicly confronting the truth about our history is the first step towards recovery. “a history of racial injustice must be acknowledged, and mass atrocities and abuse must be recognized and remembered before a society can recover from mass violence. Public commemoration plays a significant role in prompting community wide reconciliation.”[5]
[1]https://www.npr.org/2018/04/26/605736519/lynching-memorial-in-alabama-remembers-the-victims-of-unacknowledged-terror
[2]http://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/
[3]http://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/
[4]https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial
[5]https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial
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