philip-mccown-blog

[philip-mccown-blog]

Last week I made a visit with my literature class, at Auburn University, to the EJI Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery Alabama. Upon arriving to the museum, there was a quote painted on the wall outside the museum building by Maya Angelou, “History despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” This quote stuck with me for the rest of the day as we toured in Montgomery. “From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration” was the title of the exhibit in the museum. The exhibit told a story of the African American community throughout US History, and it started with the monstrous institution of slavery. 

“Slavery is the next thing to hell” - Harriet Tubman

You first see projections of enslaved individuals in cells as you walk in. (The building the museum is located in used to be a slave warehouse in the 1800′s) From children to the elderly, they told you their stories. One that stuck out was two little boys wondering where there mother was. About 12 million people were kidnapped from African and put into the slave trade. This was the beginning of a long road. “Slave owners had the power to sell, exploit, attack, rape, and even kill enslaved men, women, and children with impunity.” 

Second slavery was the next stop on the journey. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 along with the 14th Amendment ended slavery and gave citizenship to former enslaved individuals. These former slaves now had to find jobs, but since they have no money and no land they had very little option but to be share croppers in the fields they once worked in as slaves. The era of Jim Crow had begun, and was made to keep segregation and white supremicy legal. As Fredrick Douglas put “You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation, is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of 3 millions of your countrymen.” 

10 million people were segregated in the US. A news paper from the 1950′s had a headline that jumped out to me. “What have I done to maintain segregation?” This still holds true today. What stereotypes have we grown up with that we still think and use today? Though segregation ended in 1963, in the span of US history, that was not a long time ago. 

Lynching was a form of racial injustice that happen all over the United States. The exhibit had a wall of jars that were filled with dirt from documented lynchings around the nation. 4,400 documented lynchings of African Americans happed between 1877-1950. This was a form of “violent and public acts of torture that traumatized black people throughout the country and were largely tolerated by state and federal officials.” -EJI website 

At the memorial site there were individual monuments for every county where the lynchings occurred. They were organized by state going in an inward spiral. As I walked through I looked for each of the counties that I have lived in. Cobb County, Georgia was where I was born, and it had one documented lynching. Gordon County, Georgia, is where I grew up, and they also had on documented lynching. Lee County, Alabama is where I live now not only because thats where Auburn is, but my family lives here now as well. Lee County had four documented lynchings. Others had far more and expanded out to Oklahoma and Colorado. 

The memorial serves as a reminder of our dark past, but also serves as a reminder that racial injustice is still going on today in our country. From police brutality to children being separated form their families at the borders of our nation, we are still fighting an uphill battle. 

“America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.” - Fredrick Douglas