Expressing Justice and Racial Equality through Art
By: Yewon Lee
In the midst of current protests, police brutality, and systemic racism, art offers a powerful, new perspective on combating injustice. In this article, I would like to highlight one impactful work of art that brings light to the continual African American endeavor for racial and economic equality through a historical display.
Created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a non-profit advocacy group based in the historical city of Montgomery, Alabama, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice is America’s first ever memorial dedicated to the victims of lynchings and African Americans affected by racial segregation throughout history.
Consisting of over six acres of land in Montgomery, the memorial utilizes sculpture and design to bring recognition and remembrance to victims of racial violence and acts of terror. From the entrance, visitors are met with sculptures of enslaved men and women struggling in shackles, and details of lynching, directly engaging viewers of historical injustice through both visual narrative and text. Especially moving is the pavilion of over 800, six-foot tall, suspended steel monuments, each with the name of a county, names of those lynched in that county, and the days of lynching. Every steel monument has a duplicate lying in a field behind the memorial for the respective county to “claim” the monument and to place it within a public space in the county. The idea is to ultimately encourage communities in the county (mostly Southern) to collaborate and engage in uncovering the truth and in honoring lynching victims in an effort to bring about open dialogue about connections to present day issues.
The memorial helped reveal hundreds of lynchings that had never been documented. Since 2010, the staff of EJI worked to look into specific lynching cases in addition to the trauma that the violence brought to African Americans. With this research, the EJI has since published a report that found more than 4400 lynchings between 1877 and 1950, which was 800 more than those that had been previously recognized. This is incredibly significant as forgotten victims of unsanctioned violence are now being uncovered through this memorial and EJI initiative.
Currently residing in the South, I find this memorial especially powerful and personal in the present time of the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality and racism. In fact, the memorial tour ends with a tribute to the effects of the lynching era on African Americans, contemporary matters of police violence, and allusions to today’s flawed, racially biased justice system. Overall, the artwork evokes empathy from viewers, one that requires viewers to truly understand the context of injustice and expresses truth, which I think should be the ultimate goal—to tear down xenophobia at its roots by educating each other and through historical learning, which has the ability to transform American consciousness. The memorial is a symbol, not only of the progress made so far, but also as a continuing effort to recognize and act upon injustice, and as a solemn reminder to never repeat the oppression and violence of the past.
Learn More & Get Involved:
The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) offers support through the Community Remembrance Project for those wanting to join the effort.
The project:
Collaborates with citizens to set up historical markers
Holds community discussions of racial justice, past and present
Encourages county leaders to place identical monuments as those found in the Memorial for Justice and Peace
Organizes soil collection from historical lynching sites
Works with high school students through essay contests and local efforts
Over 800 suspended monuments inscribed with the county, dates, and names of those lynched between 1877 and 1950.
Duplicate monuments waiting to be claimed by the respective counties.