In the
1890’s Ida B. Wells-Barnett did not return to Memphis following the threat of
extreme violence due to her published editorial on lynching. Wells-Barnett
stated that “Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare
lie that Negro men rape white women.” (Southern Horrors, 75) Wells-Barnett dedicated
her life to documenting and drawing awareness to the unjust lynching of African
Americans. Despite this effort the brutal murders and the white supremacy
behind them were largely left out of the history of the civil rights movement.
The civil rights history is in the
midst of a makeover and curriculums are starting to instead of just focusing on
the history of civil rights in the 60’s and 70’s focus on the long arc of
injustice. A part of this shift in focus is due to historians introducing the
previous untold and ignored voices into the already accepted history. As a part
of this moment the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened, its mission
is for victims of white supremacy. It contains a memorial for lynching which
demands recognition for an atrocity which has long been edited out of history.
The memorial to lynching contains a
cloister with 800 steel columns which at the bottom contain the name of a
county and along the side have the names of every individual lynched in that
county. These beams begin by facing the viewer head-on appearing like
headstones and eventually the viewer ends below the beams looking up at them
like many white supremacists did when they lynched innocent African Americans.
This powerful visual journey draws attention to the spectacle nature of
lynching as well as the sickening reality of it. Bryan Stevenson founder of the
Equal Justice Initiative the non-profit behind the National Memorial for Peace
and Justice said this about the overall experience of the museum. “You might
feel judged yourself.” “What are you going to do?”
This powerful statement reminds me
of the experience of reading Southern
Horrors and Other Writings. While on some level I knew about lynching it is
an entirely different experience to read in depth descriptions of the horrific
murder of African Americans whose death occurred because of racism. It has been
more than 100 years since Ida B. Wells-Barnett began a lifelong campaign to
raise awareness about the injustice of lynching. Despite her tireless efforts
lynching has been left largely out of the narrative of civil rights, hopefully,
this new memorial will draw it in to the public eye and public education. Still
we are left with the question of what will you do? What will you do about the
continued racism in this country? What will you do about police killings of African
Americans? What will YOU do?
Thank you for bringing our attention to the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. I did not know that there were plans to build this powerful and necessary monument. The sanitized history of the atrocities lynching practices in our country exemplifies the way in which those in power shape the narrative of the past.
ReplyDeleteI'm very glad that this monument has been created, because the visual language we use to talk about violence is sadly lacking when it comes to white America. When teaching about the Holocaust, middle school and even some elementary school children see graphic pictures of Nazi atrocities from a fairly young age. When it comes to the racial violence in our own historical back yard, though, these images are avoided and labeled as too "graphic." I have no doubt that there is a racial component to this - white people are reluctant to admit to the violence that our recent ancestors (even, perhaps, living family members) have gladly committed.
ReplyDeleteIn middle school we read Eli Wiesels'"Night", which contains an extremely graphic, first hand account of the public hanging and prolonged strangulation of a young child in a concentration camp. I saw photographs of dead Jews lying face down in mass graves and images of piles of emaciated bodies. If these things are appropriate and necessary for children to learn (and I believe they are essential), then so too is American lynching.