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Montgomery, “Racial Terror” Lynching Remembrances, and Municipal Quests for American Truth and Reconciliation

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Memory and Monument Wars in American Cities

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

This chapter engages the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum in the heart of the former Confederacy: Montgomery, Alabama. Constructed by the Equal Justice Initiative in 2018, these darker places and space of memory are forcing locals to confront their city’s historical role in the horrors of slavery and lynching. Like other transnational cities that have confronted darker genocidal pasts, such as Berlin and Johannesburg, the EJI is activating forgotten memoryscapes for needs in the present by specifically encouraging audiences to consider the ways the legacy of racial terrorism has penetrated the criminal justice system.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Victor Luckerson, “Dismantling Dixie: The Summer that the Confederate Monuments Came Crashing Down,” Ringer, last modified August 17, 2017, https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/17/16160286/charlottesville-richmond-montgomery-confederate-monuments.

  2. 2.

    Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy, Southern Poverty Law Center, last modified February 1, 2019, https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy.

  3. 3.

    Philip Kennicott, “Competing Monuments in the Cradle of the Confederacy and the Civil Rights Movement,” Washington Post, last modified April 27, 2018, paragraph 1, https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/competing-monuments-in-the-cradle-of-the-confederacy-and-the-civil-rights-movement/2018/04/27/093ce940-47f5-11e8-9072-f6d4bc32f223_story.html.

  4. 4.

    W.E.B. Du Bois, The Oxford WEB Du Bois Reader, edited by Eric J. Sundquist (Oxford, 1999).

  5. 5.

    Bob Herbert, “Separate and Unequal,” The New York Times, last modified March 21, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/opinion/22herbert.html.

  6. 6.

    Karen E. Till, “Wounded Cities: Memory-work and a Place-Based Ethics of Care,” Political Geography 31, no. 1 (2012): 3–14.

  7. 7.

    Equal Justice Initiative, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terrorism, 3rd edition, https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/.

  8. 8.

    See Kendall R. Phillips, “The Spaces of Public Dissension: Reconsidering the Public Sphere,” Communications Monographs 63, no. 3 (1996): 231–248.

  9. 9.

    Kennicott, “Competing Monuments,” paragraph 7.

  10. 10.

    Jeffrey Lawrence, “Memorializing the Present: Montgomery’s New Legacy Museum,” The Los Angeles Review of Books, last modified November 19, 2018, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/memorializing-the-present-montgomerys-new-legacy-museum/.

  11. 11.

    Jamil Smith, “On a Hill in Alabama, the Lynched Haunt Us,” Rolling Stone, last modified May 6, 2018, paragraph 7, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/national-lynching-memorial-montgomery-alabama-629262/.

  12. 12.

    Bryan Stevenson, quoted in DaNeen L. Brown, “Lynch Him!: New Lynching Memorial Confronts the Nation’s Brutal History of Racial Terrorism,” Washington Post, last modified April 24, 2018, paragraph 13, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/24/lynch-him-new-lynching-memorial-forces-nation-confront-its-brutal-history-of-racial-terrorism/.

  13. 13.

    Smith, “On a Hill in Alabama,” paragraph 2.

  14. 14.

    James McWilliams, “Bryan Stevenson on What Well-Meaning White People Need to Know About Race,” Pacific Standard, February 6, 2018, paragraph 33, https://psmag.com/magazine/bryan-stevenson-ps-interview.

  15. 15.

    Ben Bernston, “Old Alabama Town,” Encyclopedia of Alabama, last modified May 23, 2011, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2389.

  16. 16.

    Ibid.

  17. 17.

    Brad Harper, “Savior or Butcher? Doctor’s Legacy Under Fire,” Montgomery Advertiser, September 29, 2017, https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2017/09/29/savior-butcher-doctors-legacy-under-fire/714053001/.

  18. 18.

    Brakkton Booker, “Confederate Monument Law Upheld by Alabama Supreme Court,” NPR, last modified November 27, 2019, paragraph 8, https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/783376085/confederate-monument-law-upheld-by-alabama-supreme-court.

  19. 19.

    John Sharp, “NAACP Blasts Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey Over Confederate Monument Ad,” AL.com, last modified April 19, 2018, paragraph 5, https://www.al.com/news/2018/04/naacp_blasts_alabama_gov_kay_i.html.

  20. 20.

    Ibid.

  21. 21.

    Ibid.

  22. 22.

    Krista Johnson, “Confederate Named High Schools: Some Say No More, Others Say Changing Names Unnecessary,” Montgomery Advertiser, paragraph 20.

  23. 23.

    Joseph Goodman, “Confederate Monuments Offend, But There is Something Much Worse in Alabama,” Al.com, last modified May 25, 2017, https://www.al.com/sports/2017/05/confederate_monuments_offend_b.html.

  24. 24.

    Johnson, “Confederate Named High Schools,” paragraph 37.

  25. 25.

    Terry Gross, “‘Just Mercy’ Attorney Asks U.S. to Reckon with its Racist Past and Present,” NPR, last modified January 20, 2020, paragraph 41, https://www.npr.org/transcripts/796234496.

  26. 26.

    Azwar Shakeel, “Montgomery, Alabama—Relations and Reforms,” Berkeley Political Review, last modified April 20, 2017, https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2017/04/20/montgomery-alabama-race-relations-and-reforms/.

  27. 27.

    Andrew J. Yawn, “Case of Officer Charged with Greg Gunn Murder Sent to Trial,” Montgomery Advertiser, last modified July 26, 2018, paragraph 2, https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/local/greg-gunn/2018/07/26/case-officer-charged-greg-gunn-murder-sent-trial/836745002/.

  28. 28.

    Shakeel, “Montgomery, Alabama,” paragraph 2.

  29. 29.

    Ibid.

  30. 30.

    Karen E Till, “Wounded Cities: Memory-Work and a Place-Based Ethics of Care,” Political Geography 31, no. 1 (2012): 3–14.

  31. 31.

    Ibid.

  32. 32.

    Joshua Inwood and Derek H. Alderman, “Urban Redevelopment as Soft Memory-Work in Montgomery, Alabama,” Journal of Urban Affairs (2020): 2.

  33. 33.

    In Nora Gross, “# IfTheyGunnedMeDown: The Double Consciousness of Black Youth in Response to Oppressive Media,” Souls 19, no. 4 (2017): 428.

  34. 34.

    Ibid. For more on “scopic regimes,” see Martin Jay, Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Critique (Routledge, 2014).

  35. 35.

    Gross, “#IfTheyGunnedMeDown.”

  36. 36.

    Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 190, 411–412.

  37. 37.

    See James Crosswhite, “Universality in Rhetoric: Perelman’s Universal Audience,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 22, no. 3 (1989): 157–173.

  38. 38.

    Sam Levin, “Lynching Memorial Leaves Some Quietly Seething: ‘Let Sleeping Dogs Lie,” The Guardian, last modified April 28, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/28/lynching-memorial-backlash-montgomery-alabama.

  39. 39.

    Richard Bailey, quoted in Debbie Elliott, “New Lynching Memorial is a Space ‘To Talk about All of that Anguish,” NPR, last modified April 26, 2018, paragraphs 15–17, https://www.npr.org/2018/04/26/604271871/new-lynching-memorial-is-a-space-to-talk-about-all-of-that-anguish.

  40. 40.

    Jan Percival Lipscomb, “National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., is Reckoning of Post-Civil War Lynchings,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, last modified October 24, 2019, paragraphs 1–2, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/lifestyle/travel/story/2019-10-24/memorial-honors-thousands-victimized-by-hate.

  41. 41.

    Keith Schneider, “Revitalizing Montgomery as It Embraces Its Past,” The New York Times, May 21, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/business/montgomery-museums-civil-rights.html.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., paragraph 1.

  43. 43.

    Brown, “‘Lynch Him!’ paragraph 9.

  44. 44.

    Alexis Okeowo, “A Devastating, Overdue National Memorial to Lynching Victims,” The New Yorker, last modified April 26, 2018, paragraph 9, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-devastating-overdue-national-memorial-to-lynching-victims.

  45. 45.

    Equal Justice Initiative, “Members of Congress Visit Museum and Memorial,” Equal Justice Initiative, paragraph 4, https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/news/2019-03-06/members-congress-visit-museum-and-memorial.

  46. 46.

    Smith, “On A Hill in Alabama.”

  47. 47.

    Hobbs and Freudenberg, “A Visit,” paragraph 28.

  48. 48.

    Associated Press Staff, “New Welcome Center Opens for Alabama Lynching Memorial, Museum,” Al.com, last modified January 18, 2020, paragraph 6, https://www.al.com/news/2020/01/new-welcome-center-opens-for-alabama-lynching-memorial-museum.html.

  49. 49.

    Edward W. Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).

  50. 50.

    For specific references for lessons learned in Germany see Bryan Stevenson’s Ted Talk, that has been watched by more than five million individuals. Bryan Stevenson, “We Need to Talk About an Injustice,” Ted2012, https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice.

  51. 51.

    Bryan Stevenson, quoted in Kim Chandler, “New Lynching Memorial Evokes Terror of Victims,” AP News, last modified April 23, 2018, paragraph 7. https://apnews.com/bfa16094705a4dd094c128905bf9eabd.

  52. 52.

    Caleb Gayle, “No Reconciliation without Truth,” The New Republic, April 23, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/article/148066/no-reconciliation-without-truth; PBS Newshour Staff, “Lynching Memorial Aims to Helm U.S. Acknowledge a History of Terror,” PBS Newshour, last modified December 19, 2016, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/lynching-memorial-aims-help-u-s-acknowledge-history-terror.

  53. 53.

    Bryan Stevenson, quoted in Sales, “What a New Memorial,” Jewish Telegraph Agency, last modified April 26, 2018, paragraph 3, https://www.jta.org/2018/04/26/united-states/new-memorial-black-lynching-victims-learned-holocaust-commemoration.

  54. 54.

    Ibid.

  55. 55.

    Associate Press Staff, “AP-NORC Poll, Most Americans Oppose Reparations for Slavery,” U.S. News, last modified October 25, 2019, https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-10-25/ap-norc-poll-most-americans-oppose-reparations-for-slavery. According to a 2019 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll less than 30% of Americans support the idea that the U.S. government should pay cash reparations to descendants of former slaves.

  56. 56.

    Josh Capman, “Stolperstein in Roanoke,” The Roanoke Rover, last modified June 6, 2015, paragraph 5, https://roanokerover.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/stolperstein-in-roanoke/.

  57. 57.

    Stav Ziv, “At Alabama’s Legacy Museum, Echoes of Holocaust Remembrance,” Forward, March 26, 2019, paragraph 1, https://forward.com/culture/421540/how-the-holocaust-is-echoed-in-the-legacy-museum-in-alabama/.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., paragraph 2.

  59. 59.

    Ibid.

  60. 60.

    Bruno Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public,” in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Peter Weibeland and Bruno Latour (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 7.

  61. 61.

    Kriston Capps, “Hanged, Burned, Shot, Drowned, Beaten,” The Atlantic, November 2017, paragraph 7, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/a-national-monument-to-america-s-known-victims-of-lynching/540663/.

  62. 62.

    On the Gigali Genocide Memorial see Amy Sodaro, “The Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre: Building a ‘Lasting Peace,” in Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence (Rutgers University Press, 2018), 84–110.

  63. 63.

    Ziv, “At Alabama’s Legacy Museum,” paragraph 8.

  64. 64.

    Sales, “What a New Memorial,” paragraph 12.

  65. 65.

    Bryan Stephenson, quoted in Tim Adams, “Bryan Stephenson: ‘America’s Mandela’,” The Guardian, last modified February 1, 2015, paragraph 9, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/01/bryan-stevenson-americas-mandela.

  66. 66.

    Stevenson, quoted in A J. Yawn, “EJI Lynching Memorial: A Place of Healing in the Heart of Dixie,” Montgomery Advertiser, last modified January 20, 2019, https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/local/lynchinglegacy/2018/04/27/how-ejis-lynching-memorial-heal-legacy-trauma-montgomery-peace-justice-equal-initiative/552798002/.

  67. 67.

    Gross, “‘Just Mercy’ Attorney,” paragraph 33.

  68. 68.

    Lipscomb, “National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” paragraph 15.

  69. 69.

    Schneider, “Revitalizing Montgomery,” paragraph 14.

  70. 70.

    Hobbs and Freudenberg, “A Visit,” paragraph 5.

  71. 71.

    Georgette Norman, quoted in Miller, “Alabama Memorial Confronts,” paragraph 6.

  72. 72.

    Jesse Wegman, “At This Memorial, The Monuments, Bleed.” The New York Times, last modified April 25, 2018, paragraph 8, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/opinion/alabama-lynching-memorial.html.

  73. 73.

    Jamelle Bouie, “The Pain We Still Need to Feel,” Slate, last modified May 1, 2018, paragraph 23, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/a-new-lynching-memorial-confronts-americas-history-of-racial-terrorism.html.

  74. 74.

    Huey L.Perry and Ruth B. White, “The Post-Civil Rights Transformation of the Relationship between Blacks and Jews in the United States,” Phylon (1960-) 47, no. 1 (1986): 51–60.

  75. 75.

    EJI, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” Equal Justice Initiative, paragraph 7, https://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america/.

  76. 76.

    Equal Justice Initiative, “Alabama’s Prisons are Deadliest in the Nation,” Equal Justice Initiative, last modified December 3, 2018, https://eji.org/news/alabamas-prisons-are-deadliest-in-nation/.

  77. 77.

    EJI, “Private Prison Population Skyrockets,” Equal Justice Initiative, last modified August 8, 2018, https://eji.org/news/private-prison-population-skyrockets/. For a powerful expose of life in private prisons and their range of exploitative and violent tendencies see Shane Bauer, American prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment (New York: Penguin Books, 2019).

  78. 78.

    Jefffrey Toobin, “The Legacy of Lynching, On Death Row,” New Yorker, last modified August 15, 2016, paragraph 10, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/22/bryan-stevenson-and-the-legacy-of-lynching. Between 1927 and 1976, 126 of 153 executed were African American. “Alabama,” Death Penalty Information Center, last modified 2020, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-and-federal-info/state-by-state/alabama.

  79. 79.

    Toobin, “The Legacy of Lynching.”

  80. 80.

    Equal Justice Initiative, “The Death Penalty in Alabama: Judge Override,” Equal Justice Initiative, July 2011, 15.

  81. 81.

    “After Boycott Ends, Pregnant Black Woman Shot on Montgomery Bus,” Equal Justice Initiative, https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/dec/28.

  82. 82.

    Yawn, “EJI Lynching Memorial,” paragraph 15.

  83. 83.

    Ibid.

  84. 84.

    William Thornton, More Than 300 African-Americans Lynched in Alabama in 66 Years,” Al.com, last modified April 26, 2018, https://www.al.com/news/2018/04/alabamas_racial_lynching_victi.html.

  85. 85.

    Bryan Stevenson, quoted in Katie Couric, “The Blood of Lynching Victims is In This Soil,” National Geographic, last modified April 26, 2018, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-lynching-museum-katie-couric-alabama/.

  86. 86.

    Guardian Staff, “Ahmaud Arbery’s Parents Call for Arrests After ‘Modern Lynching in the Middle of the Day,” The Guardian, last modified May 7, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/07/ahmaud-arbery-parents-call-for-arrests-killing-song-daily-jog. See Ersula J. Ore, Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity (Jackson, MS: Press of Mississippi, 2019).

  87. 87.

    Toobin, “The Legacy of Lynching,” paragraph 11.

  88. 88.

    EJI, “Lynching in America.”

  89. 89.

    Brown, “Lynch Him!” paragraph 19.

  90. 90.

    Lipscomb, “National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” paragraph 6.

  91. 91.

    Patrick Sisson, “New Memorial for Lynching Victims Reaches for Truth and Reconciliation,” Curbed. Last modified April 24, 2018, https://www.curbed.com/2018/4/24/17275094/montgomery-slavery-lynching-museum-eji.

  92. 92.

    Lipscomb, “National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” paragraph 20.

  93. 93.

    Todd Strange, quoted in Schneider, “Revitalizing Montgomery,” paragraph 28.

  94. 94.

    Laura Thompson Love, “A Necessary Education for White Americans,” The Baltimore Sun, last modified October 30, 2019, paragraph 5, https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-1031-lynching-legacy-20191030-hf5iqrm6pbbudaf2lncijmxwe4-story.html.

  95. 95.

    See Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso, 2006); Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: The Ethical in the Political (Verso Books, 2020).

  96. 96.

    Mass Design Group Staff, The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, n.d., paragraphs 4–5, https://massdesigngroup.org/work/design/national-memorial-peace-and-justice.

  97. 97.

    Ibid.

  98. 98.

    Sia Sanneh, quoted in Brown, “Lynch Him!” paragraphs 26–27.

  99. 99.

    County Council for Montgomery County, Maryland, “Remembrance and Reconciliation Commission: Background,” Montgomerycountrymd.gov, last modified January 22, 2019, paragraph 2, https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/council/Resources/Files/agenda/col/2019/20190122/20190122_5C.pdf.

  100. 100.

    Wes Swietek, “Hidden Story: Efforts Underway to Memorialize Logan Lynchings,” Bowling Green Daily News, paragraph 45, last modified August, 11 2018, https://www.bgdailynews.com/news/hidden-history-effort-underway-to-memorialize-logan-lynchings/article_c334691e-221d-5e64-bed3-e43703472f01.html.

  101. 101.

    Equal Justice Initiative Staff, “EJI Partners with Kansas City Community to Install Historical Marker,” Equal Justice Initiative, last modified December 21, 2018, https://www.bgdailynews.com/news/hidden-history-effort-underway-to-memorialize-logan-lynchings/article_c334691e-221d-5e64-bed3-e43703472f01.html.

  102. 102.

    Michael Graff, “Every Voice, Lifted,” Charlotte Magazine, last modified February 12, 2019 paragraph 42, http://www.charlottemagazine.com/Charlotte-Magazine/March-2019/Every-Voice-Lifted/.

  103. 103.

    Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe, 2018, “Old Newspapers Offer Few Clues to Denton County Lynching,” Denton Record-Chronicle, last modified June 2, 2018, https://dentonrc.com/news/old-newspapers-offer-few-clues-to-denton-county-lynching/article_e5ced55c-a590-54c9-81b4-00e838cbea2a.html.

  104. 104.

    Vanessa Gregory, “A Lynching’s Long Shadow,” The New York Times, last modified April 25, 2018, paragraph 30, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/magazine/a-lynchings-long-shadow.html.

  105. 105.

    Michelle Hiskey, “Pilgrimage to New ‘Lynching Memorial’ Fosters Racial Understand,” Episcopal News Service, past modified August 29, 2018, paragraphs 1–8. https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2018/08/29/pilgrimage-to-new-lynching-memorial-fosters-racial-understanding/.

  106. 106.

    Ibid., paragraph 14.

  107. 107.

    Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

  108. 108.

    Till, “Wounded Cities.”

  109. 109.

    See Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (EJI: Montgomery, 2015).

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  1. Department of Communication, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Marouf A. Hasian Jr.

  2. Department of Communication, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

    Nicholas S. Paliewicz

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Correspondence to Marouf A. Hasian Jr. .

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Hasian, M.A., Paliewicz, N.S. (2020). Montgomery, “Racial Terror” Lynching Remembrances, and Municipal Quests for American Truth and Reconciliation. In: Memory and Monument Wars in American Cities. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53771-5_4

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