Legacy Museum opens in Montgomery, Alabama, to highlight slavery, lynchings

[light Worker]

Source: NBC News


Ed Sykes, 77, visits the National Memorial For Peace And Justice on April 26, 2018, in Montgomery, Alabama. Sykes, who has family in Mississippi, was distraught when he discovered his last name in the memorial, three months after finding it on separate memorial in Clay County, Mississippi. "This is the second time I've seen the name Sykes as a hanging victim. What can I say?" said Sykes. He plans to investigate the lynching of a possible relative at the Equal Justice Initiative headquarters in Montgomery before returning to San Francisco, where he lives.


The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration opened this week on the site of a former slave pen in Montgomery, Alabama, where black people were once imprisoned before being sold at auction.

An unflinching reminder of America's racist legacy, the 11,000-square-foot facility will serve as a place of learning for visitors by detailing the tragic history of the slave trade and following through to current-day problems associated with mass incarceration.

The Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery nonprofit that provides legal aid to people who may be wrongly convicted, said it raised more than $20 million in private donations to fund the project.

A National Memorial for Peace and Justice is located a few blocks from the museum, and features more than 800 steel monuments that bear the names of lynching victims throughout the country. In its creation, organizers discovered the names of 4,400 black people who were lynched or died in racial killings between 1877 and 1950...

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Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/legacy-museum-opens-montgomery-alabama-highlight-slavery-lynchings-n869686

[mobeau69]

1. Welcome to DU.

[light Worker]

2. Thanks

Checkout the article in the OP - some pretty compelling images & insight.

[wasupaloopa]

3. Here is the problem with people my age I think. I grew up in the 50's and 60's in Ohio.

History taught to us was only about European conquests. The people conquered were savages and the conquerors brought them Christendom.

At the same time Jim Crow was the rule in the South and lynchings were not news in Ohio. WWII had ended a year before I was born and we were the saviors of mankind from the Nazis.

The Crusades saved the Holy Land. The Spaniards discovered the New World. We won our independence from Britain then kicked there behinds in 1812.

So when I was a kid white Americans from the Old World like my grandparents were the only people worth mentioning.

Now we add to our consciousness the fact that other people equally deserving of respect and understanding and praise existed right along with us and were mistreated by our heroines.

[light Worker]

10. I was fed the same sanitized and distorted history in a northern school.

When I learned early on that Columbus "discovered" America, I was taught (by default) that the natives of this land were to be deemed less than human - or as the government called them, "savages." ...Quite ironic given the savagery and greed that Columbus and the conquerors to follow were disposed to. But typical of every struggle between nations, the winner writes the history books.

In a high school biology class, our teacher actually told the only Black student in our class that he had one less chromosome pair than whites. I still wonder what effect that had on him. In fairness to the teacher, who seemed to be a good-hearted guy, he was most likely only repeating what he himself was taught.

[marble falls]

12. Taught shit, teach shit. Your biology teacher, of course.

[Bradshaw3]

4. We should have many more of these histories throughout our country

I really don't have a desire to visit Alabama but I do want to see this memorial so I will someday. The history of slavery and the Confederacy has been told from the wrong side ever since the Civil War and it is past time to set the record straight. They have these "plantation" tours in the south that are so ahistorical there needs to be many more antidotes like these memorials and education centers.

Thanks for posting.

[mountain grammy]

5. Thanks for posting

The Equal Justice Initiative is a very worthy cause. I would encourage everyone to follow them and donate if you can.

[The_jackalope]

6. Looks as powerful as the Vietnam Wall

A real monument. The world needs more such reminders. With names.

[light Worker]

7. Indeed

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Here is a link to their website & a video from that site

https://eji.org/national-lynching-memorial

Video from the website -

Plus there is a thread in General Discussion about this here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210543170

Thank you for posting and welcome to DU!

[light Worker]

9. Thank you...

...the video is very moving.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. You are welcome

and yes, the video is powerful.