Thurs, July 12, 2018

Montgomery, AL

This is being written after the fact.  I could not keep up with writing every night as I was totally wiped out by the day's activities.  The trip was not only physically tiring, but deeply emotional.  I needed more time to process than the schedule allowed, so I'm having to take my skimpy notes and re-construct.

July 12 -- the 120th anniversary of the date on which John Henry James was lynched in Albemarle County.  We are going to bring the soil from the site of his lynching to the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum .  Everyone has been anticipating this date as the culmination of our trip.  We all wore our special tee shirts that told the world that we were part of the Charlottesville Civil Rights Pilgrimage.

Our first stop was at the Southern Poverty Law Center's Civil Right Memorial.  I am inserting informationtion from Wikipedia to explain the concept of the memorial:The names included in the memorial belong to those who died between 1954 and 1968. Those dates were chosen because in 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools was unlawful and 1968 is the year of the assassination of Martin Luther King. The monument was created by Maya Lin, who is best known for creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.^[2] The Civil Rights Memorial was dedicated in 1989.^[1]

The concept of Lin's design is based on the soothing and healing effect of water. It was inspired by a paraphrase from King: "...we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream...." It is from the "I Have a Dream" speech, which was delivered at the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963.^[2] The passage in King's speech is a direct reference to Amos 5:24, as translated in the American Standard Version of the Bible. The memorial is a fountain in the form of an asymmetric inverted stone cone. A film of water flows over the base of the cone, which contains the 41 names included. It is possible to touch the smooth film of water and to alter it temporarily, which quickly returns to smoothness. As such, the memorial represents the aspirations of the civil rights movement to end legal racial segregation.

Unfortunately, construction at the site prevented us from getting close to this amazing memorial, and putting our hands into the water which continuously flows over the names.  I need to go back to do that.  

The exhibits at the Center were powerful in a totally different way than the others we have seen.  There are holographic figures which appear somewhat ghostly, in settings that are not necessarily comfortable to view.  I found myself really affected by this museum and will be thinking about it for a long time.

From the Memorial Center we went to the Dexter Ave. King Memorial Church where MLK preached and led the Montgomery bus boycott.  When we entered the church we were greeted by two Black women, one of whom was giving out the most amazing hugs ever !!  I felt blessed by that hug !!  The other woman, Wanda, was our guide and was so full of the Spirit that it just spilled out everywhere !  

A real treat was that Dante Walker, 15 year old son of Charlottesville mayor Nikayah Walker, played the piano for us.  I believe the piece he was playing was by Tchaikovsky; whatever it was, it was beautiful.  That young man is so very talented and it was so gracious of him to share his gift with us.  

The basement of the church houses the office that belonged to Dr. King when he was pastor from 1954-1960.  What simple surroundings !  Once more, I had the feeling of being in a sacred space.  

Even now, it is difficult for me to remember the exact order of the day !!  We went to the offices of the Equal Justice Initiative, where we were honored to be addressed by Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of EFI and author of Just Mercy, a powerful book that I read a couple of years ago.  He is so passionate for the work of bringing about justice for everyone in this country.  A daunting task !!  It has not existed since our very inception as a nation.

Following the time at the EJI offices, we went to their Legacy Museum which focuses on the issue of Mass Incarceration as a direct legacy of our history of enslaving people of color.  More powerful images, but I have to admit that I was feeling on overload and wanting to get to the Memorial to Peace and Justice .  I had some anxiety about what type of emotional reaction I might have to the Memorial as I was feeling pretty raw.  I wondered how this was for my companions who are Black.  I am assuming that they were feeling even more raw.

Here is some information from the internet about the memorial :More than 4400 African American men, women, and children were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950. Millions more fled the South as refugees from racial terrorism, profoundly impacting the entire nation. Until now, there has been no national memorial acknowledging the victims of racial terror lynchings. On a six-acre site atop a rise overlooking Montgomery, the national lynching memorial is a sacred space for truth-telling and reflection about racial terror in America and its legacy..

The memorial structure on the center of the site is constructed of over 800 corten steel monuments, one for each county in the United States where a racial terror lynching took place. The names of the lynching victims are engraved on the columns. The memorial is more than a static monument. In the six-acre park surrounding the memorial is a field of identical monuments, waiting to be claimed and installed in the counties they represent. Over time, the national memorial will serve as a report on which parts of the country have confronted the truth of this terror and which have not.

The memorial is overwhelming  !  Upon entering the site, one is confronted by an amazing sculpture of several African individuals in chains.   Their bodies and faces scream with the terror of what they are experiencing.  I could have just sat with that for quite a long time.  One more time on this trip I was asking myself about the type of person who could be confronted with this level of suffering and perpetrate it.  How could people live with themselves after selling other humans into slavery ?  How could the police and ordinary ( ?) citizens who participated in lynchings look at themselves in the mirror and not see their savagery ?  What scars did they carry ?  Was it possible to dehumanize the other so thoroughly that these things didn't trouble them at any level ?  What happened to children who were witnesses to the atrocities ?   

Walking up the hill to the square area that contains the over 800 coffin-sized modules that represent the counties in which lynchings have been documented, I felt an actual sense of dread.  I didn't want to see the names !  It all seemed too much.  Those feelings were the reason that I didn't spend a great deal of time in that space.  I wish now I had spent longer, but at the time I just needed to get some distance.  I need to sit with that.