Apr 29, 2018
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The civil-rights movement is one of the most significant chapters in our country’s history. As 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the murder of Dr.
“Travel with André Robert Lee as we visit the iconic sites of the civil-rights movement, meet with people who were a part of history, and immerse ourselves in the courage and perseverance that continue to inspire today’s fight for justice and equality.“ ~ The Nation, Travels - The tour includes a stop at the new Civil Rights Memorial to Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, Alabama, which commemorates the victims of lynching.
Since returning from last week’s Legacy of Freedom Tour people have asked, "How was your trip?" Responding to that question has perplexed
Pastor Dwayne Burks, BJU Class of 1985, reflects on his tour of Alabama’s Legacy:
Since returning from last week’s Legacy of Freedom Tour people have asked, “How was your trip?” Responding to that question has perplexed me. We visited three sites that are both historic and painful.
Our first stop was the King Center in Atlanta where we viewed remnants from Dr. and Mrs. King’s lives. Every memory stirred inside the museum was overshadowed by the gravesites just outside the window reminding us of the assassination that left Mrs. King a 41 year-old widow, standing on the threshold of history.
Our second day found us at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge where Joanne Bland just happened to be visiting the same time we were there. Ms. Bland told us she never expected to make history when she marched across the bridge in 1965 as an 11 year old.
Yet her bravery and the courage of others paved the way for an entire race of people to own property, vote their consciences, and live as free men and women. Her presence in the visitors’ center made the reminder of bloodshed on the bridge seem real and not just another story from the pages of history.
Then as Gaston’s own Dr. Darial Jackson led our group onto the bridge and recited Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, we all felt as if we were standing on holy ground.
The week closed with a tour of the recently opened Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, where thousands of casket-sized memorials are displayed. Each memorial represents a life that was ended with a violent lynching during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.
The monuments were breathtaking but the most unbelievable portion of the exhibits displayed by the Equal Justice Initiative was the photographs that provided a close look at the faces of anger-fueled lynch mobs.
The piercing, almost burning eyes of men, women and even children whose rage left lynching in their path were almost too much to digest.
These were pictures of real people -- Americans who looked like our own fathers and mothers. Yet these Americans rose up and killed real people in cold blood.
Their fear-driven rage caused them to place the mangled bodies on public display and feel fully justified in destroying the “other” in their midst. I wanted to weep, but the tears simply would not flow for fear I would never be able to stop them
So how was the trip? In a word -- it was necessary.
The trip forced us come face-to-face with those whose sacrifices set the course of freedom.
This trip was necessary because no thinking person can ignore 5,000 reminders of lynching.
One cannot walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and into Selma’s virtually abandoned downtown without seeing the broken windows literally spilling onto the sidewalk. One cannot see all this and not realize that hatred may feel justified in the moment, but it yields a deadly dividend.
Yet there is hope. Hope for this group of travelers rushed over us like a wave as we entered Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where we were greeted by a special angel named Ms. Mary who met us, threw open the door and welcomed us like prodigal children returning to the fold.
By this point in the journey we needed her hugs more than you can imagine. Her exuberance and passion filled the historic sanctuary as we spontaneously prayed and sang together in a bit of impromptu worship.
As we prepared to exit, Ms. Mary permitted several of us to pose for photographs in the same pulpit from which Dr. King had faithfully ministered.
As I stood in this hallowed space, I watched Ms. Mary hug every person in the room for a second time. I saw white people, black people, older people and younger people genuinely interacting as brothers and sisters. Then it hit me.
The journey continues but hope has never left us. The hope that showered over us in 2019 is the same hope that motivated Freedom marchers in 1965.
Those marchers had a dream that someday young people, older people, white people and people of color would do just what we were doing in this moment. They dreamed we would learn how to live together in peace.
Yes, the trip was necessary because it instills hope that we can learn to live together in peace and dignity.
Dr. King said it best. “This is our hope. We will hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. We will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood... we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together. . . and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
A Trip to Montgomery
This summer I went on a road trip with my mom through Alabama and Mississippi, which probably doesn’t seem like a fun time at face value, but we were taking this trip as a sort of pilgrimage.
My mother grew up in northern Louisiana. She was born in 1960 (sorry for aging you, mom), and her schools were integrated in 1969. However, she still had a black nanny, better known as a mammy, and had many stereotypes ingrained in her from a young age. She grew up in the Baptist Church but became Catholic when she married my father and eventually was given the title “Catholic Woman of the Year.” So, I was born into this fairly conservative, Catholic family in metro Atlanta where I learned that Atlanta was the “City Too Busy to Hate” and is the home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
My mom and I originally planned this trip just to visit the new Legacy Museum in Montgomery, but it eventually morphed into a week long trip that included Montgomery, Selma, Jackson, and Birmingham. What did I learn? Honestly, things that were too heartbreaking to put into words when I immediately returned to the burbs. People would ask me how the trip was, and I would talk about how I got to see my grandfather, who met us in Jackson, and about the cool antique shop my mom and I went to in Birmingham.
However, I was still thinking about what I had learned at The Legacy Museum, which is located in a warehouse, which used to house slaves that arrived in Montgomery by boat before they were auctioned in the main square. The museum’s full name is The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which is completely fitting. ONe begins by receiving in-depth, statistical information about slavery in the South and in Alabama and then moves into a dark room with heart wrenching videos of reenactments of slaves in the warehouses. I watched the videos in each of the cells and was almost relieved when I left the room, because I figured that the most emotional part was over. How wrong I was. In the large hall of the museum, there is a section that displays letters written by inmates that may have been tried as adults for crimes committed when they were mere children and sentenced to die in prison or people of color given unfairly long sentences. I eventually had to walk away. I am a fairly emotional person, and I cry quite easily, and I didn’t want to break out into complete sobs in a museum at 10am. It seemed a little early for a sob session (don’t worry I have since caught up in a private space).
The Legacy Museum only recently opened and is run by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), whose main office sat two buildings down from our hotel. EJI does a lot of amazing work in their community and across the country. Their website proclaims that they are “committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.” One of their projects that was well highlighted in the museum is an initiative to collect soil from sites of lynchings across the country, called the Community Remembrance Project. The soil that has been collected is put on display in The Legacy Museum to serve as a reminder of the vast number of lynchings that occurred in the United States. You even have the ability to look up how many (recorded) lynchings occurred in any county or parish in the United States. EJI has also built The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is a moving memorial also in Montgomery for the victims of lynchings across the country.
Why am I telling you all of this? Honestly, I just needed a way to release my own pent up emotions and thoughts. Trust me, these are not all of them. If I had touched on everything I felt, you would be reading this for quite a few more hours. Also, Labor Day is coming up, which means you have a three-day weekend to do whatever you want. Why not take an educational trip, like my mom and I did, to Montgomery to visit The Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice?
Already have Labor Day plans or don’t have a car to get to Montgomery? Check out EJI’s website to find ways to get involved in this very important issue and discussion: eji.org/get-involved
Want to learn more? Visit museumandmemorial.eji.org/museum
Elizabeth Osman
INTA
Lynching Memorial in Alabama Shows Women Were Victims, Too
Lynching Memorial in Alabama Shows Women Were Victims, Too
National Memorial for Peace and Justice. AP Photo/Brynn Anderson
By Evelyn M. Simien, University of Connecticut
A memorial to victims of lynching in the U.S. opens in Alabama on April 26, 2018.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justiceis a six-acre site that overlooks Montgomery, the state capital. It uses sculpture, art and design to give visitors a sense of the terror of lynching as they walk…
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MONTGOMERY, Ala | Lynching memorial and museum in Montgomery open to public
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MONTGOMERY, Ala | Lynching memorial and museum in Montgomery open to public
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The public is getting its first look at a lynching memorial and museum in Montgomery, Alabama.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, opening Thursday, is dedicated to 4,400 individuals who lost their lives in lynchings and other racial killings between 1877 and 1950. Their names are engraved on 800 steel rectangles, one for each U.S. county where lynchings occurred.
A museum is also opening in Montgomery, called The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.
Launch events include a “Peace and Justice Summit” featuring celebrities and activists like Ava DuVernay, Marian Wright Edelman and Gloria Steinem.
The summit, museum and memorial are projects of the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery-based legal advocacy group founded by attorney Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson won a MacArthur “genius” award for his human rights work.
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By BETH J. HARPAZ, AP Travel Editor,By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (A.S)
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A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It. | The New York Times The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, opening Thursday in Montgomery, Ala., is dedicated to victims of white supremacy. Source: A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It.
“hard to believe this happened”..!?! It happening now. #energydoesntdie