Lynching Victims Memorial Planned in Montgomery, Alabama

A memorial dedicated to the victims of racial terror lynching is being planned in Montgomery, Alabama. It will be called the Memorial to Peace and Justice and will be built in tandem with a related museum. The effort is being spearheaded by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).

We are building a nat’l memorial to lynching victims & opening a museum addressing our history of racial injustice. pic.twitter.com/XgWNYhe4hS

— EJI (@eji_org) August 18, 2016

According to EJI, the memorial looks over “the City of Montgomery and out to the American South, where terror lynchings were most prevalent.” In a recent interview with PBS, Bryan Stevenson, the founder of EJI, explained his organization’s motivations for building the lynching victims memorial and museum. When asked why we need a memorial like this Stevenson said:

We are really burdened by this legacy. And I don’t think we have acknowledged it adequately. We terrorized African-Americans at the end of the 19th century and through half of the 20th century. The demographic geography of this country was shaped by this era of racial terror and lynching.

Currently there is no official memorial that commemorates the decades of violence that black Americans experienced–EJI documented over 4,000 racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950. EJI argues that in order to recover from that era of mass violence, and the profound effects it still has on our country today, we need to acknowledge and confront our history. In the PBS interview, Stevenson explains the success that other nations have had with this kind of approach:

So, we have been asking people in the community to engage in acts of truth-telling and acts of recovery, reconciliation, reparation. I think we need that in this country.

In South Africa, you have seen that. In Rwanda, you have seen that. In Germany, you have seen that. I think they are healthier communities because they acknowledge their histories of mass atrocity and violence. I think we’re less healthy because we haven’t talked about the genocide of Native people, we haven’t talked about slavery, we haven’t talked about lynching.

The effort is almost completely funded, and was recently propelled into the news again as the result of a $10 million donation from philanthropists Jon and Pat Stryker. The memorial will contain the names of over 4,000 victims, on 800 columns. There will also be a duplicate 800 columns made, that will be given to states where the lynchings occurred, to be be placed onsite. The 11,000-square-foot museum, called the From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration museum, will be nearby. If everything goes according to plan, the museum will be opened in 2017, and the memorial in 2018.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.