While our country has dedicated plenty of our monuments to many great African Americans in various cities and towns, there are still a host of individuals who made a tremendous impact in this country who have yet to be honored in this manner.
Here’s a list of five individuals we feel deserve this honor.
5. 4 Little Girls — Birmingham, Alabama.
Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair were 14-year-old girls who were spending a Sunday morning in church in 1963 when a bomb killed them. The bomb was planted by white supremacists from the Ku Klux Klan meant to frighten Black people from being involved with the civil rights movement.
A monuments for these girls would be a reminder of the cruelty and evil of racism as well as the good, young and innocent who fought and continue to fight it.
4. Fannie Lou Hamer
There is a drive to have a statue of Fannie Lou Hamer in Ruleville, Mississippi. Hamer was one of the most prominent organizers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Hamer famously led the delegation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to the Democratic National Convention in 1964, which led to the Democratic Party’s support for Civil Rights and several southern racist Democrats leaving the party.
3. James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson was a great author, leader and activist. He wrote the Negro National Anthem, “Left Every Voice,” wrote “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,” and worked with W.E.B. DuBois to fight lynching with the NAACP.
A true renaissance man, Weldon should be honored with his own statue.
Too often he is forgotten among the list of Black leaders who fought against racism. A monument should help solve that problem.
2. Stokely Carmichael
Stokley Carmichael was a former leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was a very powerful civil rights organizer.
He would later help with the Black Power movement, becoming “Honorary Prime Minister” and later would become an icon to the Pan Africanist movement, moving to Ghana and changing his name to Kwame Ture.
As an icon to generations of Black activism, Carmichael needs a statue of his own.
1. Nat Turner
Nat Turner led a slave revolt in Virginia that killed more than 100 people in 1831.
As slavery is part of America, it must be remembered and those who died fighting against it must be honored, whether they fought for their freedom or died facing it.
In order for America to really distance itself from slavery, it must honor the heroes who fought against it; and one of those heroes is Nat Turner.