Well Read

WELL READ By: Hannah Lowe

Fields Howell

A VISIT TO THE NATIONAL MEMORIAL FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE IN MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA

As the pandemic dragged on last summer, and looking for creative ways to meet up within driving distance to enjoy outdoor activities, some of my close girlfriends and I decided to meet up for a weekend at Lake Martin, Alabama. We explored the state parks and enjoyed sunsets on the lake, and, finding ourselves close to Montgomery, we also spent an afternoon exploring the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).

The EJI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, renowned public interest lawyer and author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, a memoir detailing his experiences representing Walter McMillan, a young Black man sentenced to death for the murder of a young white woman that he did not commit.1 In 2019, the book was adapted into a feature film starring Michael B. Jordan.2 You might recall that our own Beth Ford wrote a review of Just Mercy for this very column in February 2016. As Beth outlined in her review, Stevenson is a masterful storyteller, and I recommend downloading the audiobook so you can hear Stevenson tell his story in his own words.

Stevenson has dedicated his life to EJI’s mission to end mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, challenge racial and economic injustice, and protect basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.3 In furtherance of this mission, EJI “work[s] with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment, and [is] committed to changing the narrative about race in America.”4 EJI represents innocent death row prisoners, works to end abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and to help children prosecuted as adults.5

In addition to its advocacy work representing prisoners, EJI has campaigned to recognize the victims of lynching by collecting soil from lynching sites, erecting historical markers, and creating a national memorial acknowledging the horrors of racial injustice.6 The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened to the public on April 26, 2018, and is “the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved Black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence.”7

EJI first started work on the memorial in 2010, “when [it] began investigating thousands of racial terror lynchings in the American South, many of which had never been documented.”8 The research resulted in the publication of a report in 2015, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, which documented thousands of lynchings in 12 states.9 Since then, EJI has further developed its research to document lynchings in states outside the Deep South, and has visited hundreds of lynching sites to collect soil and erect public markers, “in an effort to reshape the cultural landscape with monuments and memorials that more truthfully and accurately reflect our history.”10

According to EJI, the National Memorial “was conceived with the hope of creating a sober, meaningful site where people can gather and reflect on America’s history of racial inequality.”11

How to describe the memorial? It is so thoughtfully and beatifically created, I am not sure that I can do it justice. The six-acre site contains a number of powerful and thought-provoking sculptures, including a sculpture addressing slavery by artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, a sculpture dedicated to the women involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott by artist Dana King, and a sculpture dedicated to contemporary issues of police violence and racially biased criminal justice by artist Hank Willis Thomas.12 Writings by Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Alexander, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are also displayed, and a reflection space honors Ida B. Wells.13

The memorial structure itself contains over 800 corten steel monuments, one for each county in the United States where a lynching took place, with the names of the victims engraved in the columns.14 The monuments, suspended from the ceiling at differing levels, surround the visitors as they walk around the peaceful, landscaped gardens, catching the light in a way that is truly breathtaking. The memorial is a haunting and beautiful tribute to the many names listed.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, we were not able to visit the nearby Legacy Museum, but we were able to go inside the Peace and Justice Memorial Center. Inside we talked to a guide who showed us a beautifully lit display wall filled with hundreds of glass jars, each one containing different colored sand collected from lynching sites across the United States: various shades of red, yellow, and brown, each one labeled with the victim’s name and origin. This display wall is in keeping with Stevenson’s belief in the connection between the victims and the soil of the sites: “there is the sweat of the enslaved, […] the blood of victims of racial violence and lynching[, …] tears in the soil from all those who labored under the indignation and humiliation of segregation[, but …] there is also the opportunity for new life, a chance to grow something hopeful and healing for the future.”15

With such beautiful simplicity, the Memorial encapsulates this complex part of America’s racial history, accomplishing its mission to create a meaningful site to acknowledge and commemorate the victims of racial injustice.

1 https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/about 2 https://justmercy.eji.org 3 https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/about 4 Id. 5 Id. 6 Id. 7 https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial 8 Id. 9 Id. 10 Id. 11 Id. 12 Id. 13 Id. 14 Id. 15 https://eji.org/projects/community-remembrance-project/ For more about the memorial, see A Lynching Memorial is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It., New York Times, April 25, 2018, available at: https://www.nytimes. com/2018/04/25/us/lynching-memorial-alabama.html