A trip to Montgomery, Alabama

We have been in Nashville since Thursday at the Annual People of Color Conference. The teachers and students have all gone home and three of us stayed on to take a bus trip to Montgomery, Alabama for the day. It seems fitting to enter Montgomery in a bus, to honor those who had the courage to hold a bus boycott to fight for justice. The boycott began on December 5, 1955, almost 63 years to the day, and ended after more than a year on December 20, 1956  with a Supreme Court ruling declaring the laws in Montgomery and Alabama that segregated buses to be unconstitutional.

Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and it is EJI that has created the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. They also created the Memorial for Peace and Justice a remarkable expression of affirmation and declaration. The walk through the memorial was a slow and measured walk through the collective presence of 4400 people, named and unknown, who were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950. In the beginning you are standing side-by-side with these individuals who are named on large steel columns. They are grouped within the counties where they died. As you work your way down a decline you realize that at some point you are looking up and the steel columns are hanging above your head.

The entrance to the museum has these words:

"...we remember the thousands killed, the generations of black people terroroized, and the legacy of suffering and injustice that haunts us still....telling the truth about the age of racial terror and reflecting together on this period and its legacy can lead to a more thoughtful and informed commitment to justice today."

Elsewhere these words appear:

We will remember.

With hope because hopelessness is the enemy of justices.
With courage because peace requires bravery.
With persistence because justice is a constant struggle.
With faith because we shall over come.