In January of 2019, 24-26, I visited Montgomery, AL to go see the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The Legacy Museum documents in pictures, video, and newsprint the history of the slave trade, the plight of slaves in the US, the freeing of slaves, and then the oppressions African-Americans suffered through the Carpetbagger era, the Jim Crow era, the Civil Rights era, on through the continue modern enslavement of Blacks through harsh and unfair incarceration through prejudicial criminal justice system.
Did you know that slavery is still legal in the US? I did not. It is though and it is written in the US Constitution that slavery is permitted as punishment.
The Legacy Museum also documents the history of lynchings of Blacks, Latinos, Chinese in America. Over 4,000 known lynchings have been documented, with the actual number unknown.
I went with a member of Myosho-ji Temple who lives in Alabama, Traye and his partner Shane. We spent most of the afternoon of the 24th walking silently through the Legacy Museum together. Photography was not permitted in the Legacy Museum except for a digital photo booth at the end.
The bulk of these photos were taken on the 25th when I went by myself to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice which pays homage and memorializes the known 4,000+ lynchings in the US. The memorial is made of metal boxes about the size of a coffin. They are arranged by county or parish in the US. One each one is the name of all the individuals names or unknown who were lynched in the particular county.
At the end of the memorial is rows and rows of the coffin line metal boxes each a duplicate of the ones hanging as if lynched in the memorial. The hope of the memorial is that each county will claim their metal coffin and erect in memory of those who were lynched.
The photos follow.
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