In response to Black Lives Matter, considerable attention has been granted to the complex power that memorials and statues hold across society. Many scholars have come to analyse them as significant lieux de mémoire (sites of memory).Footnote 1 A term constructed by French historian Pierre Nora, this label has turned these complex sites into symbolic and material representations of how a given society has come to memorialize a particular history.Footnote 2 Whilst recently constructed, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (NMPJ) and its accompanying Legacy Museum hold a similar usefulness. An analysis both of their material features, and of how people have chosen – or not chosen – to interact with the space, serves to illustrate how divided America remains around memorializing lynching and its darker past more broadly.
The NMPJ opened in Montgomery, Alabama in April 2018 and was designed and produced by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). As the nation's first memorial dedicated to what the EJI condemns as “racial terror lynchings,” the site pays tribute to the more than four thousand Black victims who lost their lives in the terrible affair. As a recent memorial, Jenny Woodley is one of the first historians to analyse the site. She argues that through “remembering the dead, the Lynching Memorial also allows and encourages visitors to mourn,” a process that “white supremacy has long sought to deny.”Footnote 3 Whilst Woodley's work highlights a more sensitive memorialization of lynching that is beginning to take shape across America, her optimism has led to her painting a far too utopic picture. A more critical analysis which examines the difficult experiences that African Americans have faced during their visit to the NMPJ, alongside how practices of white supremacy have continued to take shape across the site, through how white Americans have chosen both to interact with and to avoid the space, is therefore required. Such an analysis reveals a less romanticized picture where Americans remain extremely conflicted over memorializing lynching.
To highlight such complexities, this essay will explore the EJI's memorial and museum from the perspectives of material culture, memory and public history, alongside incorporating scholarly work on the process of mourning. Due to the memorial being situated in America, it will rely heavily on the descriptive accounts of those who have been able to physically visit the site. Drawing on such, this essay wishes not to criticize the considerable work of the EJI, but to stress just how entrenched white supremacy has become across America. So much so that people who believe they are commemorating those who have died at the hands of white supremacy are unconsciously perpetrating similar practices. This is so through the ways white Americans have chosen both to interact with the space (through the act of taking photographs) and equally to avoid it (by opting not to claim their personal state's lynching memorial). An analysis of the ways this has impacted African Americans’ visits to the sites highlights how such decisions can have lasting ramifications. Clearly, there is a great deal to be learned and considerable space for memorials to be even more critical.
MEMORIALIZING A MORE REPRESENTATIVE HISTORY
A central aim of the EJI when constructing the memorial and museum was to challenge the “distorted national narrative” and acknowledge “the harms borne by the African American Community.”Footnote 4 The founder of EJI, Bryan Stevenson, stresses the importance of this aim through expressing how the American South's “littered landscape” of romanticized “iconography of the Confederacy” has left the country “vulnerable to replicating those features of white supremacy that we've actually never repudiated.”Footnote 5 Here, the very decision to construct the lynching site in Alabama became a political act of defiance in and of itself. It revealed how, despite efforts of southern state officials to protect a fanciful picture of its past, this is a memorialization that a vast number of people do not adopt and are determined to challenge. As Paul Stock asserts how spaces can become physical representations of “specific periods,” the NMPJ and accompanying museum serve as a direct exemplification of how memorialization surrounding lynching and America's darker past are changing.Footnote 6
The EJI's effort to promote a more representative history is displayed through the materiality of the EJI's Legacy Museum, which is located a short twenty-minute walk from the memorial.Footnote 7 Upon entry to the museum, visitors are met with a projected black-and-white image of the American flag which reads, “from enslavement to mass incarceration.”Footnote 8 The symbolic importance of embedding this message within the American flag should not be downplayed. It functions as a visual expression of how the violence of white supremacy remains woven within the very identity of the country, juxtaposed against Alabama's romanticized iconography of the Confederacy which the current governor, Kay Ivey, remains committed to protect.Footnote 9 In doing so, the EJI utilizes the museum as a political tool to encourage the visitor to recognize the long-lasting legacies that enslavement continues to have across society. The colour of the icon reasserts this discomforting truth, both visually and metaphorically, in black and white.
The unsettling connection made between America's identity and practices of white supremacy is enforced not just artistically, but spatially. One aspect of the museum display includes wallpaper of a brick wall which asserts, “you are standing on a site where enslaved people were warehoused.”Footnote 10 Immediately, the destination of the museum, and Alabama State more broadly, are made synonymous with the immoral institution of slavery. Not least because, for a visitor unaware of this fact, it becomes incredibly difficult to disassociate oneself from this truth as one is physically standing in the same spot where the atrocities of slavery took place. The EJI leaves no space for distraction, as exemplified in the various reviews left by visitors, who have described the space as “deeply moving” and “heart-breaking.”Footnote 11 Evidently, the museum not only represents an emerging memorialization of a less sanitized history of America, but also encourages others to embrace the same. Here, the EJI successfully materializes David Olusoga's refusal to advocate histories which create “a place of greater safety.”Footnote 12 Clearly, a memorialization of these more representative histories does not need to remain confined within scholarly textbooks.
Whilst on the surface these displays do not seem to be referring directly to lynchings, an acknowledgement of them as broader examples of white supremacy allows them to speak to their interconnectedness with the incident. Woodley suggests this is practically enforced through the physical journey the EJI encourages the museum's visitor to embark on.Footnote 13 Reflecting on her visit, Woodley highlights,
The main museum space is open and there are no delineations between the different subject areas … there is no obvious route round the space and therefore visitors wander at will and perhaps randomly, encountering different parts of the narrative in different orders.Footnote 14
Physically surrounded by all of the museum's content, the visitor is forced to acknowledge the wider significance of lynchings, reflecting on “what Saidiya Hartman calls the ‘afterlife of slavery.’”Footnote 15 Such a reckoning is integral to not reproducing the very same romanticized picture the EJI sets out to critique. If the EJI had focussed solely on lynchings, visitors would have had an easier time disassociating themselves from the event, categorizing white supremacy as something of the past. Instead, by asserting the contemporary ramifications that white supremacy continues to have in the form of mass incarceration, a sense of moral responsibility and urgency is handed to the visitor to both acknowledge and spread a more representative memorialization of America's past. Considering the museum's power here, it comes as little surprise that journalist Campbell Robertson has labelled it “a companion piece to the memorial.”Footnote 16
The sheer scale of the Lynching Memorial serves best to acknowledge the magnitude of the lynchings which took place across America.Footnote 17 In the middle of the Lynching Memorial is a cloister of eight hundred hanging steel columns.Footnote 18 Engraved onto each of these “weathered” columns you can find the name of an American county and the victims lynched there, many of whom are “unknown.”Footnote 19 Visitor Campbell Robertson describes it:
The columns meet you first at eye level, like the headstone that lynching victims were rarely given. But as you walk, the floor steadily descends; by the end, the columns are all dangling above, leaving you in the position of the callous spectators in old photographs of public lynchings.Footnote 20
Standing under these heavy and tall cloisters, the visitor is forced into a state of inferiority. As a result, focus is solely on the thousands of lives lost in the terrible affair. Visitor Vanessa Croft comments on the memorial's power here, stating that “it's almost overwhelming how many of these people are represented; it's sobering.”Footnote 21 Such feelings are heightened through the stories provided alongside these columns, one of which is dedicated to Caleb Gadley, who was hung in Kentucky in 1894 for “walking behind the wife of his white employer.”Footnote 22 Alongside individualizing the victims of lynching, the unsettling nature of these stories helps to emphasize just how inhumane and unjustified lynchings were.
Through opting not to include photographs of lynchings alongside the cloisters, the EJI are able to maintain a great deal of sensitivity when addressing such a violent and troubling history. This conscious decision becomes all the more important when acknowledging Amy Wood's critique of how lynching photographs can serve to enforce processes of white supremacy, functioning “as visual proof for the uncontested ‘truth’ of white civilised morality over and against supposed Black bestiality and savagery.”Footnote 23 By not displaying graphic images, the EJI do not confine lynching victims to a similar state of “inferiority,” or of “lawless mobs,” that is assigned to them.Footnote 24 Here, the EJI's memorial exemplifies how a representative memorialization of America's past can be promoted whilst remaining sensitive. This level of empathy is further demonstrated through the fact that the memorial and the museum are a nonprofit organization, highlighting how the construction of the memorial has not been distorted by monetary incentives,Footnote 25 in turn ensuring that the lives lost to lynching remain at the centre of this memorialization.
“DISENFRANCHISED GRIEF”
Kenneth Doka's theory of “disenfranchised grief” describes an “experience by those who incur a loss that is not, or cannot be, openly acknowledged, publicly mourned or socially supported.”Footnote 26 Considering such, Woodley asserts that the memorial's sensitive characteristics encourage visitors – both Black and white – to mourn.Footnote 27 This process of mourning is best promoted through the memorial's cemetery-like characteristics. Reflecting on this, Woodley describes “frequent signs around the site, reminding visitors it is a ‘sacred place’ and asking them to be ‘respectful’. Visitors generally seem to take heed of this; on my visits the atmosphere was muted.”Footnote 28 Woodley's experiences of mourning are not an isolated case. After touring the memorial, Montgomery native and African American Wretha Hudson reflected how “to me, this is more than just a memorial. It's also a sacred place because my ancestors paid the ultimate price.”Footnote 29 For many African Americans, the journey around the memorial becomes a deeply personal journey, providing an opportunity for them to search for ancestors whose lives could not be publicly grieved at their time of death. Woodley asserts that this has the power to “enfranchise Black grief.”Footnote 30 Here, a sense of closure is offered not only to those directly related to lynching victims, but to the African American community more broadly.
What is important to stress is how this process of mourning is not limited to African Americans, but carried out by white visitors. Patricia from Lockport, New York left a review on TripAdvisor, sharing how “while this is a peaceful place, it is very emotional. I was blessed to have a very sensitive guide to help me understand my emotions as an old white lady and the savagery of what happened that this memorial was depicting.”Footnote 31 The importance of the memorial's power to evoke these “emotional” feelings should not be dismissed. Encouraging widespread grief, the memorial asserts that lynching victims are just as worthy of being mourned as white Americans. Whilst such facts are undeniable, this was not something widely accepted during the “spectacle” of lynching. In this sense, the memorial makes the previously “ungrievable” lives of lynching victims “grievable.” As Woodley argues, encouraging Americans to unite and grieve together here, the memorial can help promote racial justice.Footnote 32 Reflecting on the memorial, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson asserts that “for there to be reconciliation, both sides must be willing to reconcile. For there to be healing, you have to take the glass out of the wound.”Footnote 33 Evidently, mourning the lives lost to the violence of white supremacy should not remain a task solely undertaken by African Americans, but is a widespread commitment. Only then can racial justices begin to be achieved. However, what Woodley fails to address is the issues that can arise with the memorial's efforts to promote such.
CONTINUOUS COMPLEXITIES
It is undeniable that the Lynching Memorial promotes widespread and respectful processes of mourning and memorialization. However, these practices do not always play out in reality. For some, engaging with the memorial has become a form of “entertainment.”Footnote 34 Reflecting on a visit to the memorial, one African American, William Anderson, recalls witnessing “a white man taking photos of the columns,” reflecting, “I couldn't help but think, They're still taking photos.”Footnote 35 The act of taking photographs should not be dismissed, as being able to disconnect from the sensitive nature of the memorial is an act of privilege in itself. Here, the memorial quickly transitioned from a sensitive space to one where, as Anderson reflects, “white onlookers engage in the spectacle of lynching.”Footnote 36 The process of turning the site into a form of entertainment is not an isolated incident and can be further exemplified through visitor's reviews that label the space as a perfect “tourist destination” and “stunningly new outdoor memorial.”Footnote 37 Whilst words such as “stunning” may be clumsy mishaps, they risk turning the suffering of lynching victims into a mere piece of art. Despite the EJI's attempts, practices of white supremacy and detachment continue to ensue.
The ramifications of such practices should not be downplayed, as they have proven to hinder the mourning process of African Americans. Anderson recalled, “I walked faster than I had to in order to outpace any white people around me who might distract me from my grief, which prevented me from taking time with the monument.”Footnote 38 While such distraction may be unconscious, for many African Americans white visitors possess an implicit bias that can make sharing these spaces difficult. Clearly, the trauma of lynchings continues to hinder the African American experience, making their mourning extremely tenuous and vulnerable to a dichotomy similar to that which led to the event in the first place. Unfortunately, the fight for complete freedom is far from over.
A close examination of how people have not interacted with the space can also serve as a useful signifier of how complex America's memorialization surrounding lynching remains. Outside the walkway of eight hundred cloisters are replicas of the columns, “lined up in rows like coffins,” designed to be distributed to American counties where lynchings were committed.Footnote 39 Research by the New York Times reveals how many counties have requested that their columns be collected.Footnote 40 However, what becomes particularly troubling is that despite the memorial being constructed over six years ago, Lincoln and Larue are yet to collect their monuments, indicating a reluctancy to take ownership of their state's involvement in the terrible affair.Footnote 41 Despite all of the EJI's efforts, the memorial has become yet another opportunity for those in positions of power to opt not to engage with America's darker past. Clearly, America is far from being able to unite over the matter, demonstrating a need for further efforts like the EJI's to promote a more representative memorialization of America's past.
CONCLUSION
From a perspective of material culture and public history, analysing the NMPJ and its accompanying museum provides a sense of hope towards the way America is beginning to memorialize lynching and its darker past. The sites’ material intensity, and how this has provoked widespread memorialization of the true violence of lynchings, mark an unprecedented shift in American consciousness. Woodley's comprehensive study surrounding the way the Lynching Memorial and the Legacy Museum have sparked a sensitive process of mourning helps to stress just how important this commemoration of a historically marginalized group has become to many Americans – both Black and white.Footnote 42 Whilst times are certainly changing, a more critical analysis of the way processes of memorialization and mourning remain hindered by issues of white supremacy reveals how the fight for racial justice is far from over. Many American counties, such as Lincoln and Larue, continue to show little effort to acknowledge their involvement in the affair. Whilst this dichotomy continues to play out, at least for the time being, it is time for us to learn from the EJI and use our platforms as public historians to implement long-term change. As similar horrors of lynching continue to take shape in new forms, like police brutality and mass incarceration, such efforts appear as important as ever.
