Introduction
In recent years, the US has seen a spike in violent crimes against people of color, and Black Americans in particular, by both racially motivated individuals committing crimes, but also by law enforcement members whose oath is to serve and protect. With the rise of success that minorities have seen (the Election of Barack Obama and most recently Kamala Harris to the highest offices in the country), there has been an equal reaction by White Supremacists to maintain their own position of power. While the majority of the US population is actually supportive of equal rights, they have not been proactive in helping to secure those rights, and in many ways have been ignorant to the depth of these injustices. The factors that have contributed to this ignorance is too great a topic to cover here, but this lack of equal representation in the telling of history is a large part of what minority communities are really fighting for. For far too long, not only have these communities not had a seat at the table, but those who did have a seat were actively working to ensure that minorities would never be invited to the gathering. During the Jim Crow era, those in power not only placed legal roadblocks that would leave minority communities in poverty for decades to come, but through means of terrorism meant to intimidate and remind freed slaves that they were not truly free or equal. A common tactic that was used was the placement of statues and monuments of Confederate “heroes'' that are found littering public squares and the lawns of state houses throughout the south. The city of Montgomery, Alabama is a perfect example of one such display. Front and center of the North Wing of the Alabama State House, stands a 90-foot-tall Monument dedicated to the 122,000 soldiers who fought for the South. (Evans & Fernandez, 2021, p. 1203) Like many of these monuments, the denotation glorifies the “Cause” for which brave men lost their lives, in order to preserve “Southern Chivalry ''.
Having struggled for decades to address the deep issues of racial injustice that have occurred throughout the country, every generation has been confronted by them and either by choice or by force has been made to face these issues. This is especially true when it comes to Black Americans and the legal and systemic barriers they have faced across every generation. In recent years, this repression has begun to boil over, in cities across the country, particularly in the South, with the rise of open public disdain for Confederate Monuments, but also with more Civil Rights Statues and Monuments being commissioned and erected. The introduction of several Counter Monuments has forced visitors to contemplate this long and dark history and is helping shift the focus to creating a more inclusive future. Though the reception of these monuments and memorials has been mostly positive, is this new wave of support part of what has fueled racial tensions in recent years?
The History of Confederate Monuments
The ongoing rhetoric around Confederate Monuments is that they exist to remember the fallen soldiers that served during the war, and to mark Battlefields where many lives were lost. In the first few years following the end of the Civil War, this was true of many of the monuments that were erected. They were placed in areas like cemeteries or empty battlefields, and generally displayed the names of those from the community who had lost their life during the war. This was especially true, for soldiers whose bodies were either never found or never returned and were buried elsewhere. Because Confederate soldiers were typically not welcome in Northern cemeteries, they lay in unmarked graves throughout the North. This need for graves and markers led to the formation of the Ladies Memorial Association, which had small chapters that operated in cities throughout the South. During the period of Reconstruction, the military kept a close eye on the activities of Southerners, but in the decades that followed, the LMA would grow to become the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The organization was well organized, and their fundraising abilities were unmatched, as the focus shifted from simple memorial monuments to grand statues that glorified the “heroes” of the South, such as Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, the money poured in even faster. (Lees, 2021, p. 1002) The purpose of these Monuments was clear: the South may have lost the war, but their way of life would not be stifled that easily. The “Lost Cause” monuments were no longer being placed in cemeteries and battlefields, but instead in predominant public places, where freed slaves would pass by and be reminded that they would never be equal to a white man, and that someday “the South may rise again”. This tradition continued for decades following the war and even following the decision in the Brown vs. the Board of Education case in 1954, Confederate statues were placed on the lawns of desegregated schools. (Evans & Fernandez, 2021)
As broken as life was for minorities in the South, after decades of being denied the rights that Americans hold so dear, the system that had been so carefully constructed by White Supremacists began to crack. Slowly, through court battles and boycotts, and nation-wide protests, the Civil Rights Act was passed, but that didn’t end the inequalities that Black Americans faced, the system was still tipped in favor of the white man.
Counter Monuments and Their Impact
In 1989, Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer from New England, founded the Equal Justice Initiative, after the US Congress cut funding for the legal defense organization Stevenson oversaw in Montgomery, Alabama. The mission of the EJI is focused on “ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.” (Equal Justice Initiative, 2022) After decades of labor to address the inequalities within the US Judicial system, the organization has begun to focus more on educating the public on the issues that have plagued minority communities, and how we can begin to address these issues in order to begin to heal from the relationship this country has had with race.
As the organization has grown, they have dedicated more resources to researching the history of inequalities that have existed when doling out punishments to Black Americans for their alleged crimes. Much of this research came as a result of working with marginalized communities with a deep history of poverty and disenfranchisement. The focus on false imprisonment and excessive sentencing, led the organization to begin a multi-year study of what they term Racial Terror Lynching. They found that over 4,000 Americans had been lynched, based on perceived infractions committed against white people throughout the South. As the study was expanded to included Northern states, they found over 4,400 cases of documented racial driven lynchings. After releasing their report Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, the EJI noted that there were no memorials or monuments that documented or commemorated the deaths of these 4,400 Americans. This led to the creation of the call for proposals to design a facility that would shed light on this dark part of history. (Equal Justice Initiative, 2022)
MASS Design Group based in Boston, answered the call to try and create a space that would attempt to address the lack of representation that the story of Black Americans has seen. Racial lynchings receive little attention in the telling of American history, and almost nothing has been done to reconcile these events. MASS and EJI created a process in which communities that had seen racial lynchings, had soil collected from the specific locations where the lynching occurred. (MASS Design Group, 2022) This meant that the community became an active participant in the process of beginning to finally recognize the victims as individuals whose lives were unjustly taken and took the first steps in making sure that their stories were told. The project also directly connected the research back to the community that had been impacted by this form of terrorism, whose sole purpose was oppression and subordination.
As the specific counties were researched further and individual victims were better identified, MASS pushed on with the creation of a memorial that would be sited in a city whose landscape is covered in Confederate Monuments, and sparsely dotted with monuments honoring the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement and the victims of slavery. (MASS Design Group, 2022) The creation of the Legacy Museum, located in a warehouse where slaves awaiting the auction block were housed, presented an opportunity to create a memorial that would finally remember the victims of racial terror. MASS Design Group began exploring ways to tell the story of lynching while keeping the focus on the victims.
What they were able to create is described as an overwhelming, but also humbling experience. It is intended in its design that visitors after viewing the collections in the Museum will then walk the grounds of the Memorial, but the Memorial stands as a statement in and of itself. As visitors enter the 6-acre Memorial site, they are taken on a journey through the history of slavery and the terrors that Black Americans faced following the Civil War, beginning with the Jim Crow era. Quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr. line the walls as visitors enter the space, that serve to highlight the injustices that occurred in the early days following the war. As visitors progress through the space, they find themselves walking among the large Corten steel blocks that are suspended from the ceiling. The blocks are 6 feet tall and about a foot wide. At the top and along the bottom of each block is the name of a county in the US where a racial terror lynching wrongfully claimed the life of an American citizen. Below the name of the county, are the names of the victim and the date in which the murder took place. Along the walls are placards that give the details of the alleged infractions that the victims had committed. These stories help to highlight just how evil and senseless most of these killings were and showcase the lack of justice across the US. As the visitor continues farther into the space, the ramp begins a slow descent into the earth, but as the visitor is lowered into the space, the blocks remain at a fixed height from the ceiling, so that the visitor is forced to look up in order to read the inscriptions on each block. The Memorial has 805 blocks in total that are suspended from the ceiling, meaning that by time the visitor reaches the bottom, it feels like there are 800 bodies hanging above them. At the point where the visitor has reached the bottom of the ramp, they find themselves at a waterfall, with an adjacent sitting area where they can reflect on their experience and begin to try and reconcile its meaning. As visitors exit the enclosed space with the suspended blocks, they continue their journey through sculptures representing the struggles that Black Americans experienced during the Civil Rights Movement and highlights the role that women played in its successful outcome. (Evans & Fernandez, 2021)
Surrounding the main structure at the Memorial, are replicas of each of the suspended blocks that are laid out across the grounds of the park. The second phase of the Memorial is to once again engage with the communities where a lynching occurred. The EJI had replicas made with the intention that each county would claim their steel block and hang it in a public space within their community, as a way of both recognizing the victims, but also recognizing the racial injustice that went unchecked within the community. (Evans & Fernandez, 2021)
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice was not the first Counter-Monument that forced the visitor to descend into the earth as part of the experience. But unlike the Vietnam Memorial in DC, or the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, the Memorial for Peace and Justice does more than engage the visitor in remembrance of the victims, it also forces the visitor to acknowledge their own role in the current atmosphere of racial injustice that is still present in the US. Though the Memorial for Peace and Justice is the only monument to those killed by lynching, it is not alone in its attempt to tell the real story of Black America. (Evans & Fernandez, 2021)
Moving Forward
With the rise in violence against Black Americans, the world is finally witnessing an overdue reaction from the American people. Part of that reaction has been to address the number of symbols that blatantly express or promote white supremacy in civic and public areas. There has been a rise in public outcry to remove many of the statues and replace them with better representations of American history. There have been cases where the public grew tired of waiting on action from their government, or simply disagreed with the decisions that were made and took matters into their own hands. The world watched as monuments were violently removed or defaced, which has led to discussions about whether the monuments should be repaired or removed. But there is a strong case that could be made for leaving them as they are, in their current state of despair or defacement. Many of these statues were put in place to reenforce White power over people of color, and that power and dominance is an important part of US history. But the struggle and resistance to that power is also an important and fundamental part of history.
Over the last decade there has been growing pressure to remove Confederate statues and propaganda from public spaces. And there are hundreds that have been moved to other locations, were disassembled, and placed in storage, and some that have been destroyed by vandalism. Following calls for the removal of a number of prominent monuments throughout the South and local and state governments acting on those calls. A violent protest in Charlottesville, NC led by White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis, who were focused on preserving the statues, was met with counter protesters that wanted to see the removal of more monuments. The murder of George Floyd was just fuel for a fire that was already burning. As protests broke out across the US, a target that became front and center was the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia. The statue is in no way a dedication or memorial to those who served in the war, it is not placed on a site where any battle took place, or any significant event during the Civil War, the only purpose the monument served was to support the narrative that the South was not defeated, and that white Americans would continue to reign over minorities and people of color. (O'Connell & Forrest, 2020) As protests intensified, the pedestal that supported a bronze statue of Lee on a horse, was covered in anti-racism and anti-police sentiments, and messages of remembrance for the victims of racially charged crimes that had recently occurred. At the height of the protests, the pedestal and statue served as the backdrop for a projection of the Black Lives Matter logo and the faces of victims of police brutality, with a heavy focus on George Floyd.
Following the protests, the statue was removed, and a fence placed around the pedestal. The debate began over what to do with the site, one side demanded the complete removal of the statue, and another side that wanted to see the monument restored to its original “glory”, and then of course there were those in the middle that had varying ideas as to what should happen to the monument. (Lees, 2021) This issue also sparked more debate within the art world, particularly among historians and preservationists. They were in a conflicting spot, because the Monument in question was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, meaning that at some point it was deemed that the site was a display of historic significance. But on the hand, they also understood the history of the Monument and the purpose that it served, and many rose to the challenge and voiced their opinions. And it seems that the Confederacy has once again found itself on the wrong side of history.
It was finally determined that the remaining pedestal of the Robert E. Lee Monument would be removed and placed in storage, at this time it has not been determined what will happen on the site. But a global pandemic has also created delays and obstacles that will be felt for probably a decade to come. But the demand for the government to address Confederate statues is only gaining ground, as non-minority members of the community are becoming more engaged in the debate, it has forced many politicians to choose a side, and siding with the Confederacy is less and less popular with every passing day. (Lees, 2021)
Though groups like the Equal Justice Initiative are making great progress, we still have a long way to go, in the fight against racial injustice, but the majority of Americans are moving in the right direction. Will the Confederate Monument located just a few blocks from the Memorial of Peace and Justice be removed any time soon, not likely. But we can’t underestimate the power that the EJI is having, and as these projects expand and help to call attention to these inequalities, as well as educate the public on the issue, the more people that may become an ally to the cause. Maybe the next Memorial will highlight issues of Red Lining and find ways to show how Black Americans have been robbed of the opportunity to build generational wealth, or maybe create an experience that places people in a situation where they are forced to experience segregation. We may one day see a memorial that honors the victims that have died from police brutality. Or maybe they highlight an issue that the vast majority of Americans are not even aware of. Because more than anything, the lack of knowledge and awareness surrounding the issue of racial inequalities are what will hold us back from reconciliation, not the racially motivated hate groups that exist on the fringes of society.
This paper was originally submitted in March of 2022.