The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

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Exterior view of the memorial

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice , also known informally as the National Lynching Memorial , is a national memorial commemorating the victims of racist lynching in the United States. The memorial is located in Montgomery, Alabama . It was built in 2018 on the initiative of Bryan Stevenson , founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a non-profit organization from Montgomery.

description

Steel cuboid with the names of victims engraved

The memorial consists of 805 steel blocks suspended from girders in a columned hall . Each cube represents one of the counties in which lynchings took place. The names of the victims of this county are written on the blocks. EJI documented more than 4,400 lynchings between 1877 and 1950. EJI suspects thousands more undocumented murders. Most of the murders occurred in 12 southern states. The monument is, along with local memorials such as the Duluth Memorial , the first national memorial to commemorate the victims of lynching.

The memorial was designed by the MASS Design Group from Boston, and built on land purchased by EJI.

Outside the structure there are another 805 identical steel blocks. It is planned to set up these steel blocks in the counties concerned as memorials.

Near the monument is the "From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration" museum, also built by the EJI. It was built on the site where once enslaved Afro-Americans were sold, and documents the history of slavery, exploitation, and mass incarceration of Afro-Americans.

Web links

literature

  • Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror . 3. Edition. EJI, Montgomery, AL 2017 ( Online: Lynching in America ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jonathan Capehart: What the lynching memorial will force us all to face . In: The Washington Post , December 21, 2016. Retrieved January 15, 2017. 
  2. ^ A b The Memorial for Peace and Justice
  3. Becky Little: See America's First Memorial to its 4,400 Lynching Victims. April 20, 2018. Retrieved April 21, 2018 .
  4. ^ Oprah Winfrey: Inside the memorial to victims of lynching , 08:30
  5. ^ Jean Song: Alabama lynching memorial aims to confront ramifications of slavery . In: CBS News , August 16, 2016. Retrieved August 23, 2016. 
  6. a b Erin Edgemon: Nation's first memorial to lynching victims, museum set for Montgomery . In: The Birmingham News , August 16, 2016. Retrieved August 23, 2016. 
  7. EJI Announces Plans to Build Museum and National Memorial lynching . Equal Justice Initiative . August 16, 2016. Retrieved August 23, 2016.
  8. ^ Nia-Malika Henderson: This new lynching memorial rewrites American history , CNN. April 9, 2018. Retrieved April 12, 2018. 
  9. ^ Oprah Winfrey gets first look at memorial to lynching victims in Montgomery. USA Today , April 9, 2018; accessed April 21, 2018 .