NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — One of the ugliest chapters in American history is the lynchings of African Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Alabama, with cities like Birmingham and Selma, are central to the Civil Rights Movement, but in the state capital of Montgomery lives the country’s most complete monument, a tribute to the Black men, women, and children killed by racial violence in America.
“We started a research project to uncover the number of lynchings across the country, there were a couple of databases that we really wanted to get a comprehensive number,” said Trey Walk from the Equal Justice Initiative.”
Trey Walk of is a project manager at the Equal Justice Initiative, the non-profit, borne out of a law office that started to fight for people that were vulnerable in the legal system.
The research project he mentions bore fruit in 2015’s Lynching in America report which became the foundation for the National Memorial for Peace and Justice
“We documented over 4400 Black men, women, and children that were lynched from 1877 to 1950 and we still work with communities today to learn more about those stories.”
The research is ongoing, and over 2000 more lynchings have been uncovered.
The memorial is stunning and sits on 65 acres overlooking the city with over 800 six-foot steel monuments, denoting every county and parish where a lynching took place and the names of those killed.
“We want people to understand that there is hardly a place in the country that you could go to be free of this violence, and even in places weren’t specific racial terror lynchings, there was still racial terror violence connected to lynching.”
A stone’s throw from the memorial is the Legacy Museum, a partner site that focuses on the legacy of slavery through world-class art, cutting-edge technology, and critically important scholarship about American history.
”One of the worst things a person can do in the face of injustice is silent about it or to look the other way or be passive and these sites are us asking people pt make a commitment to remember this history and to never forget. We hope that that act of remembering is the first step toward righting the wrongs of this history and freeing ourselves of the legacy of this history.”