Bring the National Memorial for Peace and Justice to Your Classroom and Community

Update: Here is a link [PDF] to a list of lynchings by county.

The new National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which was open to the public this past week in Montgomery, Alabama, offers history educators a unique opportunity to engage students around the ongoing debate about monuments. As many of you know this new memorial commemorates the thousands of black Americans who were lynched between 1877 and 1950.

What I find most interesting about this particular memorial is that it offers each county across the country, in which a lynching took place, the opportunity to claim a piece of the site to remember and honor the victim(s).

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.

Who or what will be the catalyst that begins the conversations in these communities? May I suggest that the obvious answer is our students.

We are going to see a great deal of resistance from adults over raising the discussion of whether this painful history deserves to be acknowledged on a local level. Our students can lead the way with the help of history educators who believe that how we remember history is as important as teaching it.

Students can and should…

  • research the victim(s) of lynchings in their communities.
  • discuss whether the monuments should be claimed by their communities.
  • engage the public and local city council about why their monument should be claimed.
  • discuss where in the community the monument should be placed and what kind of dedication should be held.
  • put together any necessary interpretive panels to help their community understand the relevant history and purpose of the monument.

These are just a few of the questions that history educators can introduce to guide their students in this project.

This is about more than acknowledging history that has been conveniently lost. It is an act of citizenship for all involved. For students it asks them to reflect on how the past informs the present and how facing the past clarifies who we are and the values we claim to embrace today.

It asks students to take ownership and responsibility for their neighborhoods and communities and serves as a reminder that our futures are tied up in our pasts.

 

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13 comments… add one
  • Rob Baker May 6, 2018 @ 15:49
  • Brad May 6, 2018 @ 12:32

    I just ran across this article in the New York Times, Lynching’s Long Shadow, that might be of interest, https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/magazine/a-lynchings-long-shadow.html

  • Brad May 5, 2018 @ 4:15

    The National Memorial and the EJI are the brainchild of Bryan Stevenson, who does fantastic work to help prisoners. Here is a great article about him that appeared in the New Yorker a couple of years ago, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/22/bryan-stevenson-and-the-legacy-of-lynching

    • Kevin Levin May 5, 2018 @ 4:17

      I just finished his wonderful book, Just Mercy, which every American should read.

  • Matthew May 2, 2018 @ 10:17

    I think there was a map, maybe not by county, at jimcrowhistory.org. That site went down in 2012. You can still access via the Waybackmachine.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20120410221642/http://jimcrowhistory.org/

    • Kevin Levin May 2, 2018 @ 10:20

      I added a link to a list by county at the top of the post.

  • Msb Apr 29, 2018 @ 11:46

    Wow, another reason to visit Montgomery.

    • Kevin Levin Apr 29, 2018 @ 11:50

      I am hoping to visit next spring on a civil rights tour with my students. Last time I led a student trip through Montgomery we stopped to talk with a group of lawyers and the Equal Justice Initiative. Unfortunately, Stevenson was out of town.

  • John Sweeney Apr 28, 2018 @ 8:10

    A couple of observations:

    1) What is the significance of the yer 1950? Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, I believe. I am curious as to why that year was chosen.

    2) While the majority of lynchings happened in the South, many occurred in other regions also.

    http://www.omaha.com/eedition/sunrise/articles/the-lynching-of-will-brown/article_9bf510b0-ba48-5664-95a9-60eb8beed866.html

    Besides the gruesomeness of this murder (hung, shot apart, pieces burned), they tried to hang the mayor when he objected. No one was charged with anything, and everyone went about their business as if nothing had happened.

  • cagraham Apr 28, 2018 @ 7:52

    Do they host an online database of lynchings by county that they base their memorials on? Guess what I’m asking is that if they have a memorial that students in a particular county–say, Hanover County, Va.–should advocate claiming, how do those students know? Can’t seem to find that, but maybe I’m not looking in the right place.

    • Kevin Levin Apr 28, 2018 @ 8:02

      I couldn’t find one either and was wondering the same thing as I was thinking about the post. They need to add it to their website.

  • Robert Colton Apr 28, 2018 @ 7:49

    Great post. I hope counties around the country will erect their own monuments. This memorial is long overdue.

  • Diane Hyra Apr 28, 2018 @ 5:04

    One of those times when I wish I taught middle or high school history and not elementary ESL. I wonder if all victims of all types of lynchings will be memorialized. A book I have read on the subject is “Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America” by Laura Wexler. It documents the shooting murders/lynchings of four African Americans in Georgia in 1946.

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