Facing History
It is cloudy when we arrive at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Beginning the self-guided walk, we are met with various art installations and engraved stone walls. In the distance we see where we are heading: The main memorial square displaying more than 800 steel monuments that represent counties where lynchings took place.
Mellody and I were in Montgomery to meet with clients and staff at AIM, a non-profit organization that provides support to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. We are collaborating with them on a research project about women’s lived experience of incarceration in AL. After completing our walkthrough of The Legacy Museum the day before, it was time to face the Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is also affiliated with Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).
I’m undeniably nervous, my hands sweat. I wonder how this experience will relate to the Legacy Museum which was a thorough and emotional examination of the history of slavery and oppression in the United States.
When we finally approach the metal monuments, they are level on the ground and we walk among them. They are at least 7 feet tall and are made of burnt orange steel. We are eye level with the engraved names of the people who were murdered, county by county. There is an urge to read each name, the need to honor each person and family. But as we walk through it becomes apparent that this is impossible. We pass countless monuments with 10, 20, 30 names. A great deal of the structures also list “unknown” victims and dates.
As we continue, the ground dips but the steel boxes stay suspended from the same place in the ceiling of the outside structure. We begin walking alongside the now elevated monuments until eventually we are completely underneath them. Looking at the path ahead we are almost underground, under a ceiling of caskets. It becomes difficult to read the names, the monuments loom above our heads. I feel tiny underneath the structures.
Eye level now are plaques with specific lynching accounts: Real stories of people killed for uninvestigated accusations, for loving the "wrong” person, for standing up for their lives. I stop to read one plaque that describes a lynching of one man in front of a crowd of over 10,000 white men, women, and children. It is now that it feels unsettlingly real. To imagine a crowd of 10,000 people, with not one advocate for this victim, was more than heartbreaking, it was infuriating. I brace myself before reading other accounts, the stories do not get better. They are equally horrifying and unsurprising. To see the names and hear the statistics is one thing, and reading the untold stories brings me even closer to this history of racism.
As I read the names and accounts, I feel the urge to detach myself emotionally. It is much easier to read when you do not imagine the people’s lives and families, the hobbies that they had and the dreams that were taken from them.
I remind myself that easier is not better in the name of social justice. I sit in the experience with full vulnerability and emotion. To embrace anything less than the true anger and sadness I feel would be a disservice to the lives that this Memorial remembers. These are stories that have been erased and people who did not have the option of peace or comfort. I take my time reading each plaque. I reflect on my emotional reactions instead of pushing them aside.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is a reminder to us all that horrible acts of oppression have been justified and accepted as “normal” throughout history. While I was shocked about the crowd of 10,000 that gathered to watch a lynching, how many people today ignore injustice and the need for continued social change?
My experience at the Memorial informs our work in SHAWN. The linear connections between slavery and the modern incarceration system are glaring and to ignore these common threads is an injustice to the history of racism. The stories that formerly incarcerated women in Alabama shared with us are intimately intertwined with the history we faced in the EJI Legacy Museum and at the Memorial. As we work on SHAWN, we must be willing to face discomfort, guilt, anger, fear, and other emotional reactions that surface. Social change cannot occur without this honest reckoning.
