Dear White People, If A Memorial Dedicated to Lynchings of Black People Makes You Uncomfortable, Goo

[sheshe2]

On April 26th of this year, the Equal Justice Initiative will open both a memorial and museum in Montgomery, Ala., dedicated to the victims of lynching in America post-Civil War. The memorial is called the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the museum is called The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. Both were featured with a first-look on Sunday evening’s episode of 60 Minutes.

With reporting done by Auntie O (Oprah Winfrey), the story included a trip to the memorial and museum with the Equal Justice Initiative’s director, Bryan Stevenson. The soon-to-be-opened monument is riveting in its execution. It features over 800 pillars hanging from the ceiling, representing the over 800 counties in America where lynchings have been recorded, and each pillar includes the names and dates (if known) of the victims.


What stood out most about the story on 60 Minutes were the pictures of lynched black people, often with several (up to as many as 15,000) people standing around watching the execution of illegal justice for “crimes” committed by black Americans. In many of the communities, the lynchings were public spectacles, outings for the entire family to attend dressed in their Sunday’s best, with callous articles written that read as if the public torture and deaths of black people was just what you do on a warm afternoon in September. As is often the case with American history, often times it was.

Watching that story pissed me off. No more than usual, but it still pissed me off though not for the reason that you might think. What truly pissed me off was that I know for a fact that CBS would recieve complaints that they had the nerve to show these pictures of bodies hanging with rope as a public spectacle. I know that white people HATE seeing their fuckedupness. They hate it. They think none of it is necessary to see. To many, you can tell the story without the pictorial proof of hate.



snip

I’m glad 60 Minutes showed the images because I learned a long time ago that the only way to get people to make change is to make people uncomfortable. If you let people stay comfy in the spaces they occupy, they’ll never do the work to think about if change is needed. It’s hard to reconcile oneself with images of black bodies, strange fruit, hanging in the wind, and not in some way consider just how fucked up that form of “justice” was. And that it ever was allowed to happen and that so many people celebrated that occurrence. I guess if you’re white you can divorce yourself from it but that’s a conscious decision. Maybe you can view that as a bygone time even though today’s justice system kills black bodies with reckless abandon or puts us in jail while white kids who kill black people get off with light suspended sentences.

Read More: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/dear-white-people-if-a-memorial-dedicated-to-lynchings-1825117175

Outings to watch these public spectacles, as many as 15,000 attended these lynching's, dressed in their Sunday best. Smiling, celebrating, complicit.

[Me.]

1. About Time

+1

[hlthe2b]

2. Years ago, I saw a display of postcards (postcards!) "celebrating" these public lynchings...

I was only in my 20s, but that so horrified me, I had a hard time thinking about much of anything else or putting it into any kind of context. That is what this story and memorial are meant to do. It is painful, but we need to see it and internalize what it means. Same as we should ALL do with the Holocaust Museum. Inhumanity festers with ignorance of our past.



I still have never gotten those postcard images out of my mind. No one should

[sheshe2]

4. Good post.

I thank you hlthe. No, we can never forget our dark past. I can just imagine how those post cards haunted you.

[alphafemale]

23. "Without Sanctuary" Graphic images at link below

[Lucky Luciano]

27. Sick shit.

Last edited Mon Apr 9, 2018, 09:21 PM - Edit history (1)

I remember one of those postcards where the white scumbags were bragging to their friends about the barbecue they were having (this lynching involved burning the man alive).

[brush]

59. The lynchings today are done by murdering cops of unarmed AAs who then they go home to sleep...

and get paid desk duty the next day until the DA exonerates them because they "feared for their life".

[ProudLib72]

3. This is the first thing that popped into my head

While I imagine that black people and white people who feel guilt will be the visitors of the museum—and let’s be real, it will be ripe for racist vandalism—I’m glad museums and memorials like this exist to shed more light on this country’s past.

But if there was ever a time for this museum to open, it is right now.

[sheshe2]

5. We need it now more than ever, ProudLib.

We can never forget or try to erase our dark past.

[Eliot Rosewater]

19. Now more than ever is both true and SAD. Thanks for the information.

[sheshe2]

22. Now more than ever. Fact.

Thanks Eliot.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

51. I'm with you all the way on this... never forget is right!!

[Mopar151]

7. An excellent "vandal trap"

Security cameras and the cops on speed dial.

[Nay]

64. Not only should there be museums, there should be statues right next to

Confederate statues -- statues depicting the whippings, torture, and lynchings that went on. I say we should keep all those Confederate statues up, and put up a slavery statue right next to it. Maybe THAT would get the message across.

[irisblue]

6. Well yeah

Obvious things should be more obvious.

[NurseJackie]

8. Thanks for posting this. It's disturbing... it's horrifying...

... it does make me feel uncomfortable. It makes me feel shame and fear that it could happen again.

[sheshe2]

10. Hey Jackie.

Anyone that does not feel uncomfortable, shame or outrage is not human. There is always a fear that something like it will happen again. History repeats itself, badly.

Luv ya too. Keep fighting the good fight.

[Eliot Rosewater]

21. About SIXTY MILLION of our citizens will find this amusing at best.

They are also known as deplorables, racists, Rumpus DeLaTraitorous base.

[brer cat]

11. That it could happen again

has been in my mind since the selection of trump. He is inciting the very people who would jump at the chance.

[Gothmog]

9. Lynching has been a sad part of the history of the south

Link to tweet

[X_Digger]

13. Not just a southern phenomenon, sadly.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/01/a-comprehensive-map-of-american-lynchings/513293/

[sheshe2]

17. Sadly, this.

Lynchings formed the bloody backdrop of Southern life . for a century after the Civil War. Between the 1860s and 1960s, thousands of black Americans were killed in public acts of racial terror. Millions more fled to cities in the North and West in an effort to escape this environment. Many soon discovered that, in many ways, the rest of American society was no less racist.

How many lynchings occurred during the Jim Crow era? Where? These are difficult questions to pinpoint. A November 2015 report by the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative found that nearly 4,000 black people were killed in lynchings in a dozen Southern states between 1877 and 1950—a higher number than any previous estimates. But lynchings were not strictly limited to the South. And, although black Americans were victimized in far greater numbers than any group, other minorities were also targets.

A new map project called Monroe Work Today—named after the pioneering black sociologist who gathered much of the data—aims to be the most comprehensive catalogue of proven lynchings that took place in the United States from 1835 to 1964. Not only does it reach back further in time than most studies or maps, it also spans all regions of the U.S. The mapmakers at Auut Studio developed the map as an interactive high-school lesson plan, spending four years synthesizing modern academic research with historical lynching records. Their interactive project lists 4,000 victims of lynchings nationwide, as well as nearly 600 additional victims of “racialized mob violence.”

1835 to 1964. Let that sink in...until 1964. 1964.

[Gothmog]

30. From my twitter feed

Link to tweet

[sheshe2]

45. Poor poor pitiful them.

Golly gee, makes them feel uncomfortable. How the fugg do you think it made the black people being lynched?

Reminds me of Barbara Bush and her beautiful mind.

[Gothmog]

58. Three of my law partners are on the board of the local chapter of the ADL

Santa Fe Texas is a smsll town between Houston and Galveston that is subject of a famous SCOTUS case on school prayer. This lawsuit was a John Doe case where the idenity of the plaintiffs was kept secret. There was one Jewish family in Santa Fe and the bigots in the sundown town decided that this family had tobe responsible for this lawsuit.

The ADL had to help this family movr. The actual plaintiffs were some christians.

In Texas, a sundown town is a jurisdiction where non whites need to be out of town before sundown. The south still

[Gothmog]

55. Look at Vidor Texas and the term "sundown cities"

In Texas there are still cities where non whites need to be out of town before sundown. There are towns in East Texas. where drivers are pulled over for driving while being non white and where the police will use civil forfeiture if these drivers have cadh on their persons

[X_Digger]

70. Sundown cities were not just a phenomenon in Texas. Or even the south.

I grew up in appalachia- southwest virginia to be more specific, and I heard that the back of the town sign said something similar.

[sheshe2]

14. "I honored their lives by not looking away. "

The truth is we are all affected by slavery. “It’s a disease. It needs to be treated.” - Bryan Stevenson

Sad truth, Gothmog.

[Gothmog]

16. Agreed

I have not seen this documentary but intend to watch it

[randr]

12. The displays of lynched men and women are horrific

The displays of hundreds of white folk in their Sunday best enjoying a lynching are obscene.

[Me.]

15. Kickin' This UP

[sheshe2]

18. Thanks, Me.

[kairos12]

20. There should be a historical marker at every location these shameful acts happened.

I was always struck that when I lived in Germany I could always find markers on houses and other locations where Nazi atrocities happened. It keeps the memory alive. No such effort to make America's terrible legacy of lynchings be kept in the forefront of our historical record. At least, not that I'm aware of. This needs to change.

[bobbieinok]

24. IIRC Woodie Guthrie's father had something to do with a lynching in Woodie's hometown.

[bobbieinok]

25. Also IIRC there was a lynching near Tulsa a few yrs before the Tulsa Race Riot of the early 20s.

[Pope George Ringo II]

29. I give Tulsa some credit for how they handle that now

I don't know if the display at the airport was permanent, but you were left with a pretty clear picture of how bad that riot was.

[EffieBlack]

26. Unfortunately, like most things like this, the ones who REALLY need to learn about it will never go

[sheshe2]

34. Umhm.

That is a fact, Effie. Those that need to will not.

What a horrible way to die, I can't even imagine their fear when a rope is tightened around your neck when the crowds smile and cheer for you to die. They are dressed in their Sunday best. Christians. Christians?

They are called strange fruit. True, they were not the fruit of the tree. Trees bear the fruit of life, they hung fruit of death. Strange fruit, strange fruit.

Shame on them all.

[Lucky Luciano]

28. I want to take my son. He is 5 now, so it may be premature, but by 8, I would do it. nt

[sheshe2]

35. Thank you.

[raven mad]

31. Tears (joy).

Everyone should also check out the outdoor exhibits "on the Square" in downtown Birmingham.

Sheshe2, awesome post. Will try and talk beautiful beleagured daughter in Pelham into taking a short road trip w/camera.

Oh, and I don't mind anyone of any race pointing out facts of my being fucked up, but they'd better be FACT. I don't respond well to rumor....

Hugz! sheshe2, from still-damn-frozen Fairbanks.

[sheshe2]

37. Hey raven...someday maybe I will get there.

Travel is not affordable right now.

If your daughter gets there please post pictures, it is the next best thing.

Thanks raven....

As Obama said. We are the change we have been waiting for. He is correct....and I may be slightly off with the quote...no matter it is true.

I see so much dismal talk here...ya know...the ones that say suck up to us or we will not vote? No matter the Democratic base is fired up and ready to go.

Fired up?

Ready to go!

Hell yes we are!

Obama and Clinton fired us up. They inspired us. They continue to inspire our Democratic base.

[Eko]

32. It does make me uncomfortable

and it is indeed a good thing. If it doesn't, something is wrong with them.

[sheshe2]

46. True, Eko.

[TygrBright]

33. Yes. It makes me feel uncomfortable. It SHOULD.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki memorials make me feel uncomfortable.

The Japanese internment camp remembrance site here in Santa Fe makes me feel uncomfortable.

The Sand Creek massacre historic site makes me feel uncomfortable.

Comfortable people are rarely motivated to change themselves, or promote change culture-wide.

So yes, uncomfortable is good.

determinedly,
Bright

[barbtries]

36. after what they did to Don Siegelman

I thought i'd never step foot in AL. Now I may just for this museum.

Bring the history, the REAL history we were never taught in school. How the hell else can we ever "...help men rise from the dark depths of prejuduce and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood" ?

[Cha]

38. Thank you, she!

[sheshe2]

39. Thanks Cha.

[Cha]

47. I'll comment

when I have time to do it justice.

[sheshe2]

48. Luv ya Cha

[spike jones]

40. Theyre selling postcards of the hanging The Death of Emmett Till- Bob Dylan

Warning! Graphic disturbing images in this video

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=death+of+emmett+till+video+dylan&qpvt=death+of+emmett+till+video+dylan&view=detail&mid=029A16B7148B107898D5029A16B7148B107898D5&&FORM=VRDGAR

[Me.]

49. Emmett Till

Poor, dear child.

[bdamomma]

41. Well CBS showed

it now meaningful dialogue has to happen among the American people. Enough is enough. We all have same colour of blood RED!

[Mister Ed]

42. K & R n/t

[TheSmarterDog]

43. .

[Ilsa]

44. Uncomfortable? Absolutely. And saddened to tears that Americans

could do this to one another. And ill to see such violence.

This memorial is necessary. No one should forget. Ever.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

50. I'm actually looking forward to seeing it.

America can't shy away from the lynchings any more than the Japanese Interment Camps, Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, Slavery, and it's brutal treatment of migrant farm labor. I'm a proponent of opening the closet doors wide and shining a bright light on the skeletons.

[wasupaloopa]

52. Doesnt make me uncomfortable. We need to

make it clear what all of the history of this country is. Good and bad.

[Gothmog]

53. There used to be a KKK bookstore in Pasadena Texas

When I was in college, I drove pass this bookstore. I was with a group of college debaters and we nearly had a wreck when one of the debaters saw this bookstore. It was scary to think that this was out in the open. There are several KKK chapters still in operation in Texas

[fleabiscuit]

54. K&R

[DumpDrumpf]

56. I Have A Dream

Where the assets of corporations & American oligarchs who profited from slavery, racism, xenophobia are finally seized & a massive trust fund to rebuild African American & Native American communities could finally start the healing. The grave sins of slavery & genocide can never be forgiven without actual, real world justice...not words...actions. #SomedayJustice

[Doodley]

57. I don't like the implication that because I am white, I am not as capable as black folk of

empathizing or caring about the mistreatment of blacks. I suppose because I'm not a Jew, I don't care about the Holocaust. Because I'm not a woman, I don't care about the struggle women have had to vote. Because I'm not gay, I don't care about guys who have lived a lie or committed suicide because they have not been accepted. Because I'm not a native American, I can't understand why they might feel an injustice. We are Democrats here, and we care, no matter who we are. That is why we are Democrats.

[sammythecat]

69. I agree with all you said here

In addition, I think there are few things more useless and stupid than people flagellating themselves over the sins of others. I see that in some responses here and other threads.

[Doodley]

73. Thank you for saying so. None of us are better than anyone else based on our color, gender,

sexuality, religion or non-belief. We all need to be the anti-Trump and be there for each other.

[radical noodle]

60. Lynching goes on even now

although done by means other than hanging and without the big gloating crowds of the past. It not only makes me uncomfortable, it breaks my heart.

Thank you for this post, sheshe2. I missed 60 minutes the other night, so hope to find it somewhere when I have time to watch.

[Gothmog]

61. Racist Murder Of James Byrd Jr.

A good example of a fairly recent lynching in Texas is James Byrd, JR. https://newsone.com/2019388/james-byrd-jr-murdered/

On June 7, 1998, the 49-year-old Byrd would find himself on a Texas road near the town of Jasper at night, when a trio of men, Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer (pictured), and John King, offered him a ride. It was later reported that Byrd and Berry knew each other. The friendly gesture turned deadly, though, when the men savagely beat Byrd and chained his ankles to the back of the pickup truck Berry was driving, dragging him three miles over asphalt and road and causing severe injuries. Byrd was said to be conscious during most of the harrowing ordeal, finally dying by way of a decapitation after his body hit a culvert in the road.

The men were quickly arrested, with Jasper finding itself uncomfortably under the glare of scrutiny and shocked stares. Police charged the trio with capital murder, as each of the men was tried in separate cases. King, considered the ringleader, and Brewer were part of a White supremacy group; they reportedly met in prison when they joined the gang years prior.

Both men were sentenced to death row with Brewer being killed by lethal injection last September. On the eve of his death, Brewer said he felt no remorse and would do it all over again. King currently sits on Texas’ death row list, while Berry, who is serving life in prison, was spared capital punishment after prosecutors determined by some manner of miracle that he was not a racist.

[Gothmog]

62. This new lynching memorial rewrites American history

Here is a good article https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lynching-memorial-montgomery-alabama/index.html

Montgomery, Alabama (CNN) — One of my first thoughts when I arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, and encountered the spring heat was this: How did enslaved men, women and children endure day after day?
It was an odd thought, given that I'm a Southerner, and heat, certainly not spring heat, wouldn't ordinarily be overwhelming, nor would it lead to thoughts of enslavement. But here, history is heavy, it's immediate, and it's everywhere. And the history that is most on display -- in obvious and not-so-obvious ways -- is deeply tied to slavery and its enduring aftermath.

The streets here are named for Confederate generals. The state flag -- the St. Andrew's crimson cross on a field of white -- evokes a Confederate flag. There's a star at the Alabama State Capitol on the spot where Jefferson Davis became President of the Confederate States.

Not a block away, a young Martin Luther King, Jr. and other activists planned the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott from his basement office at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. On the same street, slave traders once sold women, men and children alongside cows at bustling slave depots.

There is also the Rosa Parks Museum, the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center and many murals commemorating the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movemen

[Cha]

63. From your link, she

This country’s troubled history with race and justice will have to be reckoned with by white people one day, which is one of the stated reasons for the memorial and museum.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. Martin Luther King Jr. said that, and the people who whitewash his mentality and messaging will one day learn what that means.

PaulMooneysTonguePanama Jackson
4/09/18 5:47pm

My father recently told me a story about a family member who had to flee the South because he nearly was lynched for beating up a white sharecropper.

I don’t care about the discomfort of white or any other race when it comes to this subject. They fail to understand. That lynchings weren’t just mass mob murders for entertainment but the act itself had serious impact on the emotion and mental health of its victims and their families.

I can't even imagine the emotional impact of these heinous lynchings had on their loved ones.. Is it any wonder it's passed down from family to family through the centuries?

One thing I didn't see him mention was how many African Americans are gunned by cops without carrying. I don't know the studies but it seems to me there's an inordinate amount of POC who are victims of excessive force and bad kills.

Mahalo for this article, she.. very enlightening. And, thank you, Auntie O!

And, some people in 2014 were trying to say "racism is over because.. President Obama". Yeah, they knew what they were talking about.

[sheshe2]

68. Thanks for that high-lite.

And your last paragraph, Cha...

[Gothmog]

65. From my twitter feed

Link to tweet

[sheshe2]

67. Thank you for this Gothmog. nt

[The Polack MSgt]

66. Kick and Rec nt

[ehrnst]

71. K&R

[ConnorMarc]

72. Yeah, This is a reason to visit Alabama

Good post OP.