On September 11, 2021 I visited the Lynching Memorial, which is near the newly expanded Equal Justice Initiative Museum, From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.

At the heart of the “National Memorial for Peace and Justice” (Lynching memorial) is a vast collection of giant, rusty metal, rectangular pillars, hanging tightly together like a neatly planned and well-looked-after orchard.

Etched in each are the names of (known) lynching victims by date.

We can see that, at times, entire families were lynched.

The pillars are hung so cleverly that one has to experience this artistic installation in person.

Nonetheless, the subject of white terrorism in the deep south is heavy,

Which is perhaps why Guests are invited to visit the nearby museum before the Memorial.

One needs time to prepare.

Naturally, sandwiched between enslavement and mass incarceration exhibits,

The museum also has an array of material on lynching.

This included a giant mural of jars surrounded by videos, infographic murals, maps and

An interactive register of every known lynching by county, date, state, and name.

I’m still stuck on the mural of snapshots of actual lynching advertisements, and

Pictures of actual news reports of victims’ final words.

These were the actual final words of folks etched forever in these hanging, rusty pillars.

Ostensibly, written by war correspondents.

Standing in awe of the museum’s wall of jars, I chatted with a tall Black man about my age.

He’d traveled here from a neighboring state with his teen son to, as he said,

“See how this stuff we go through today ain’t new.”

I recounted to him what a young man at the EJI memorial had showed me a few years ago:

A man’s name who’d been lynched early last century for selling loose cigarettes –

Just like Eric Garner!

Yet, even since then,

We’ve gotten the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor,

Or even Michael Brown, Walter Scott and Philando Castile.

Amadou Diallo was shot 19 times in 1999, standing on his own stoop

And while Jayland Walker got 46 bullets this year while fleeing on foot.

Tamir Rice!

Tamir Rice was a little boy.

A little boy playing in the park. But his mere presence terrified a white man.

So he called 9-1-1 and the police showed up and shot Tamir within seconds!

We can watch the tape.

All of these martyrs are included in the museum’s growing timelines (sigh).

After their own legal work in representing the wrongfully imprisoned for damn near life,

EJI began collecting jars of dirt near every known lynching, and

If invited by local officials, EJI would offer a memorial plaque and ceremony commemorating that community’s recognition of historic injustice(s).

An open field sits next to the suspended pillars, filled with a duplicate of each pillar.

These duplicates sit, having yet to be collected and properly dedicated by each county.

These communities are denied healing, and we know wounds fester.

The field of lame duplicates effectively memorializes the festering denial in our body politic.

There are far too many unrecorded victims and versions of white mob violence, and intimidation, not just barbarous torture and heinous murder.

Outside of these few sorts of memorials,

We do have to wonder how else this rich history has stayed in our collective memories.

Too many Black families were too traumatized to talk and didn’t want to pass it to their kids.

We know many fled after any minor incursion,

Just as someone had advised Emmet Till to do,

And there’s no accounting for them and the victims’ families who fled and

Even hid or discarded any news clippings they’d seen of the events.

Yet, whites must have kept record.

Did whites collect the newspaper ads or reports of a lynching they’d attended or hoped to?

They made and sold lynching postcards, curios, and other odd lynching souvenirs.

Where are the avid collectors?

Plus, apparently, terrorists don’t just kidnap and hang someone to death,

So what did they do with all the ears, noses, fingers, and genitals they cut off?

Or eyes they plucked out?

Or scalps they shaved?

Many victims pass out from the immense pain of being tortured and burned alive, but still

I doubt all those pieces and parts got thrown in the fire, because, of course,

Plenty of pictures show entire white families there to celebrate the lynching like (a) V-day.

And in many ways, it was, and

The whites looked as if they would’ve wanted to remember.

Looks can be deceiving, but the ways whites were also bullied into compliance is real.

Still, my mother swears that some white families’ heirlooms must include

Prized, preserved pieces of Nat Turner.

Ooh, wouldn’t that be a treasure that would be.

Plus, given the spate and state of anti-Black policing and violence,

Our democracy, nay, our Constitution itself, is as rusty as these pillars.

The pillars resting in the field remind us not only the work left to do, but also, it’s urgency.

How many more pillars may we still need?

How many amendments did will freedom take?

It goes to show how great thou art now!

See: Slave Ads at the EJI Museum