This was the main purpose for our trip to Alabama.
History, despite its
wrenching pain, cannot
be unlived, but if faced
with courage, need not
be lived again.
The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
–Ida B. Wells
Thousands of African Americans are unknown victims of racial terror lynchings whose deaths cannot be documents, many whose names will never be known.
They are all honored here.
The only way to end the legacy of domestic terrorism is to remember, confront our part, and learn. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice remembers the 4,000 documented lynchings in the United States from the end of Reconstruction to the 1950s. Also called the Lynching Memorial, it is a sacred space with sculptures and a courtyard that evoke emotions of sadness, anger and thirst for justice.
Every county with one or more lynchings has a permanent memorial placed in by state and county in alphabetical order. There are docents who can help you find a particular county, or in our case, to research if there was a lynching in California. There was one county for California represented: Kern County (Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley).
Hundreds of black men, women, and children were lynched in the Elaine Massacre in Phillips County, Arkansas, in 1919.
Bird Cooper was lynched in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, in 1908 after he was acquitted for murder.
Dozens of men, women, and children were lynched in a massacre in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917.
The Legacy Museum gives more detail and a timeline of the lynchings. Through a multi-media presentation of historical accounts of lynchings, the Legacy Museum carries the story through to the new method of terror, mass incarceration.
The tickets to the Memorial are $5 per all persons (children under 6 free); $8 for EJI’s Legacy Museum and a combined ticket of $10 per person. There is plenty of parking near the Memorial and a shuttle between the Legacy Museum and the lynching memorial. We thought there might be crowds on the Thursday in October and bought our tickets in advance. This probably is no longer necessary as it has been open for over 6 months. There is a security check at both locations. EJI hosts a gift shop next door to the Legacy Museum.