My visit to a lynching museum - #showcase-sunday
A powerful experience
This post was one that I wrote over a year ago. You can find the original post here. While I was traveling for my book about the Civil War and Civil Rights, we stopped at a museum in Montgomery, Alabama. I had seen some news articles and read up about the place and knew that it was going to be a pretty powerful place, but I had no clue how emotionally powerful it would be.
This was one of the most impactful parts of the trip, so I wanted to share it again with everyone here using the #showcase-sunday tag. #showcase-sunday is a tag that you can use on Sundays to share one of your older, original works, with the community, once a week.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice
I had the opportunity to visit The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. This was an amazing experience that I was looking forward to on when I found out the route we were taking on our trip.
The quote on the wall in the picture says "Thousands of African Americans are unknown victims of racial terror lynchings whose deaths cannot be documented, many whose names will never be known. They are honored here."
The museum was constructed to honor the more than 4400 documented lynching victims from 1877 to 1950 in the US. There is believed to be about 3-4 times more victims that were never documented.
In the museum there are 800 steel monuments hanging from the ceiling, each one representing a county in the US where a lynching occurred. The names of the victims in each of the counties are engraved on the monument that is hanging.
You could feel the tension
The museum had recently opened in April and it is a pretty controversial topic in the south right now. One of the things that I had noticed that the others in my group had not noticed was that there was a large amount of security posted around the outsides of the museum all along the walls.
There were also fire alarms and fire extinguishers placed all over the place. I spoke with one of the workers and asked if they had received threats against the museum while it was under construction and they said that they had kept the meaning of the museum pretty quiet while it was being built, but when it opened there had been some backlash from some in the area.
Emotional times
It is hard to read the reports of some of the lynchings and why they happened. Here are a few of the horrible reasons why this happened to these people.
General Lee, a black man, was lynched by a white mob in 1904 for merely knocking on the door of a white woman’s house in Reevesville, South Carolina. source
In 1934, after being accused of “associating with a white woman” in Newton, Texas, John Griggs was hanged and shot seventeen times and his body was dragged behind a car through the town for hours. source
In 1918, Private Charles Lewis was lynched in Hickman, Kentucky, after he refused to empty his pockets while wearing his Army uniform. source
White men lynched Jeff Brown in 1916 in Cedarbluff, Mississippi, for accidentally bumping into a white girl as he ran to catch a train. source
The stories were horrible and it was hard to realize that this was happening less than 100 years ago. It was a big eye opener to what has gone on in this area of the US because it is an area that I am not from.
As I was walking around reading the names and taking pictures, I noticed a group of three women and they appeared to be searching for something or someone.
I could tell that they were becoming emotional being in this place as they were searching for what I assume to be a loved one that had been brutalized.
The older woman spent time wiping away tears as they searched for the area where the county that the name they were searching for was located.
The museum is laid out nicely and all of the workers can point you in the direction of a certain county you are looking for. It did not take them long to find the one that they were looking for.
I could only imagine what was going on in that woman's mind seeing the name on the monument. I don't know if it was a father, grandfather or what, but I could tell that it was someone that meant something to her.
This was a powerful moment to see the impact that these events were still having today.
The bonds of Slavery
When you first enter in the museum there is a large sculpture of a group of slaves in shackles. This is a very in your face display and really sets the tone of the whole museum because the artist did an excellent job capturing the emotion in these sculptures.
On the wall near the sculpture plaque with information about the start of slavery in the US.
It states that during the 17th and 18th centuries, 12 million African people were brought to the US on a journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
During that time, nearly 2 million of those on the torturous journey died along the way.
They were packed into the ships for the 2-3 month long voyage with barely room to move. If someone were to die during the trip, they were still chained next to the others for the remained of the trip.
It is hard for anyone to imagine the atrocities that this people had to endure. The horrible thing is that there are still areas of the world that this is still happening.
The only thing that we as a people can do from here is to not try to erase the past or to hide the mistakes that have been made. That is one of the reasons that this museum was constructed. It was made to honor those that were victims of these acts of violence, but also to server as a reminder of where our country has been so that we do not return to that state.
Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to look through my pictures and read through my experience. I hope that you took something away from it. If you are ever in the area of Montgomery, Alabama, I would highly recommend visiting this area, because it is definitely worth paying respects to all of the victims and learning about the history of what happened.
Amazing photos! 👌
Thank you. I appreciate it.
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That is a very powerful momument. Thank you for sharing this, I never knew something like this existed.
It was a very somber experience. Thank you for taking the time to stop by.
May we remember the past so that we do not repeat it in the future.
I agree. It is important to remember that these atrocities happened so that we can prevent them from happening again.
I am traveling to states tomorrow but to Florida. If I were to go near this area I would definitely check this place out.
I can't even imagine... it just leaves me thinking about Man's inhumanity to man.
Very powerful images; and a very powerful monument/museum, too. We don't often find ourselves in that part of the country, but I will definitely mark this down for future exploration!
=^..^=
Mankind does unspeakable things to one another. I hope that you do get the chance to visit this place. It is a very powerful experience.
I am so glad that out of the blue, I picked you from my follow list and chanced upon this post! So very powerful! That this exists, and you wrote about it, restores my faith that all is not lost. We may be experiencing dark times right now, but there is hope for the better! Your photos are evoking strong emotions - great work! I will be resteeming and sharing this multiple times.
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