Shining a Spotlight on Lynching

Eight hundred weathered steel beams hang from the roof of a new memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Etched on each column is the name of a U.S. county and the people who were lynched there.

There’s Caleb Gadly, lynched in Kentucky in 1894 for “walking behind the wife of his white employer”; Mary Turner, a pregnant woman, who was hung upside down, burned alive, then sliced open after denouncing her husband’s 1918 lynching by a white mob; and Parks Banks, hanged in Mississippi in 1922 for carrying a photograph of a white woman.

Thousands more are listed, many simply as “unknown” because their remains were never identified.

Eight hundred weathered steel beams hang from the roof of a new memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Etched on each column is the name of a U.S. county and the people who were lynched there.

There’s Caleb Gadley, lynched in Kentucky in 1894 for “walking behind the wife of his white employer.” Mary Turner, a pregnant woman, was hung upside down, burned alive, then sliced open after speaking out against her husband’s 1918 lynching by a white mob. And Parker Banks, hanged in Mississippi in 1922 for carrying a photograph of a white woman.

Thousands more are listed. Many of them have been marked as “unknown” because their remains were never identified.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened earlier this year alongside a museum that explores the history of racism in America, is unlike any memorial this country has ever seen. It’s the first one dedicated to the thousands of African-Americans who were lynched during a decades-long campaign of racial terror from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. While monuments to the Civil War and Confederate leaders dot the Southern landscape, the stories of these murdered men, women, and children have been largely downplayed or even ignored—until now.

Part of the power of the memorial is “just seeing the names of all these people,” says Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (E.J.I.), the nonprofit organization behind the site. Many of them, he says, “have never been named in public.”

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened earlier this year, is unlike any memorial this country has ever seen. It’s the first one dedicated to the thousands of African-Americans who were lynched during a decades-long campaign of racial terror from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. And it’s next to a museum that explores the history of racism in America. Monuments to the Civil War and Confederate leaders dot the Southern landscape. But until now, the stories of these murdered men, women, and children have been largely downplayed or even ignored.

Part of the power of the memorial is “just seeing the names of all these people,” says Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (E.J.I.), the nonprofit organization behind the site. Many of them, he says, “have never been named in public.”

The memorial shines a light on one of the nation’s least recognized atrocities. More than 4,000 lynchings took place in the South between 1877 and 1950, according to a recent report by the E.J.I. Lynchings also happened in smaller numbers in the North. The total number of lynchings may never be known, as many went unreported or uninvestigated by local police.

Lynchings became widespread after the Civil War (1861-65), mostly in the South, as a tool to re-establish white supremacy—the belief that white people are superior to people of all other races and should therefore have control over society. During the period following the war, known as Reconstruction (1865-77), African-Americans were granted some freedoms. Congress passed the 14th Amendment, which gave black people citizenship and equal protection under the law, and the 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote. For the first time, blacks in the South cast ballots, sat on juries, and were even elected to Congress—with the help of federal troops sent to the South to enforce the laws.

For many former slave owners, this was their worst fear come true.

“If blacks were allowed to continue, white supremacists surmised, they just might eclipse white people,” says historian Kidada Williams, who has written a book on lynching. “That could not be allowed.” 

The memorial shines a light on one of the nation’s least recognized atrocities. More than 4,000 lynchings took place in the South between 1877 and 1950, according to a recent report by the E.J.I. Lynchings also took place in smaller numbers in the North. The total number of lynchings may never be known. Unfortunately, many of them went unreported or uninvestigated by local police.

Lynchings became widespread after the Civil War (1861-65). Most of them occurred in the South. They were used as a tool to reestablish white supremacy. That’s the belief that white people are superior to people of all other races and should therefore have control over society. The period following the war is known as Reconstruction (1865-77). During that time, African-Americans had been granted some freedoms. Congress passed the 14th Amendment, which gave black people citizenship and equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote, was passed as well. For the first time, blacks in the South cast ballots, sat on juries, and were even elected to Congress. They did all this with the help of federal troops sent to the South to enforce the laws.

For many former slave owners, this was their worst fear come true.

“If blacks were allowed to continue, white supremacists surmised, they just might eclipse white people,” says historian Kidada Williams, who has written a book on lynching. “That could not be allowed.” 

So when the federal government withdrew troops in 1877, it unleashed a violent backlash from many whites who were bitter about having to treat their former slaves as equals. And it gave rise to white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, which terrorized blacks across the South.

Whites often used lynching as a way to suppress the black vote and to enforce Jim Crow laws, which segregated whites and blacks in public spaces, such as restrooms, restaurants, and schools. Lynchings continued into the 1950s and ’60s, as African-Americans began to challenge the status quo during the civil rights movement.

The federal government withdrew troops in 1877. That unleashed a violent backlash from many whites who were bitter about having to treat their former slaves as equals. And it gave rise to white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, which terrorized blacks across the South.

Whites often used lynching as a way to suppress the black vote and to enforce Jim Crow laws. These laws segregated whites and blacks in public spaces, such as restrooms, restaurants, and schools. Lynchings continued into the 1950s and ‘60s, as African-Americans began to challenge the status quo during the civil rights movement.

In 1955, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago named Emmett Till was buying candy at a grocery store in Mississippi when a white woman accused him of grabbing her. Four days later, Till was kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Nobody was ever convicted of the murder. The lynching made national news and became a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

It was also representative of one of the most pervasive and irrational fears during the Jim Crow era: that black males were preying on white women. Nearly 25 percent of the lynching victims E.J.I. documented were black males accused of sexual misconduct against white women. 

Many other African-Americans were hanged for minor transgressions, such as using profane language, refusing to step off a sidewalk to make way for a white person, or failing to address a police officer as “mister.”

Lynchings were frequently advertised in newspapers and held in prominent public spaces in front of thousands of white people, including children. White spectators sometimes had picnics and posed with the hanged bodies for photographs to send to loved ones. 

“As public events, lynchings were meant to be seen and recorded,” says Williams. “They were meant to terrorize and instill fear in black people for resisting white supremacy.”

In 1955, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago named Emmett Till was buying candy at a grocery store in Mississippi. There, a white woman accused him of grabbing her. Four days later, Till was kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Nobody was ever convicted of the murder. The lynching made national news and became a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

It was also representative of one of the most pervasive and irrational fears during the Jim Crow era: that black males were preying on white women. Nearly 25 percent of the lynching victims E.J.I. documented were black males accused of sexual misconduct against white women. 

Many other African-Americans were hanged for minor transgressions. Among them were using profane language, refusing to step off a sidewalk to make way for a white person, or failing to address a police officer as “mister.”

Lynchings were frequently advertised in newspapers. They were held in prominent public spaces in front of thousands of white people, including children. White spectators sometimes had picnics and posed with the hanged bodies for photographs to send to loved ones. 

“As public events, lynchings were meant to be seen and recorded,” says Williams. “They were meant to terrorize and instill fear in black people for resisting white supremacy.”

The new memorial comes at a time when many Americans are rethinking how we should remember history. Recently, debates have raged in many cities over whether to remove monuments that honor Confederate leaders. Those in favor of removing the monuments argue that they distort history by paying tribute to people who fought to keep slavery in place while ignoring the violence and pain caused to the victims of slavery. But others say the monuments represent Southern pride and removing them would be erasing the history of the South.

Debates like these turned violent in August 2017, when a white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to oppose the city’s plan to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee left one person dead and several others injured. 

In a sense, the new memorial is a counter to the hundreds of Confederate monuments that have been erected in the South. Stevenson of the E.J.I. says it’s modeled after the Holocaust museum in Berlin, Germany, which is devoted to the millions of Jews and others massacred by the forces of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.

The new memorial comes at a time when many Americans are rethinking how we should remember history. Recently, debates have raged in many cities over whether to remove monuments that honor Confederate leaders. Those in favor of removing the monuments argue that they distort history by paying tribute to people who fought to keep slavery in place while ignoring the violence and pain caused to the victims of slavery. But others say the monuments represent Southern pride and removing them would be erasing the history of the South.

Debates like these turned violent in August 2017. That month, white supremacists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to oppose the city’s plan to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The chaos left one person dead and several others injured. 

In a sense, the new memorial is a counter to the hundreds of Confederate monuments that have been put up in the South. Stevenson, of the E.J.I., says it’s modeled after the Holocaust museum in Berlin, Germany. That museum is devoted to the millions of Jews and others massacred by the forces of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.

“In Berlin, you can’t go anywhere without seeing stones and markers dedicated to the Jewish and Roma residents who were forced from their homes and taken to the concentration camps,” Stevenson says. “In the American South, we’ve done the opposite. We’ve actually created symbols designed to make us feel great about our history, about the 19th century, about the good old days of the early 20th century.”

To help visitors further understand the role racism has played in America since colonial times, the E.J.I. also opened the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration near the memorial. It connects the dots from slavery to lynching to mass incarceration, showing how racism and racial violence persist today. Visitors are confronted with troubling statistics, such as those showing that, a century and a half after the abolition of slavery, blacks are far more likely than whites to live in poverty, be imprisoned, and be killed by police.

“There are these terrible disparities in quality of life for people of color,” says Stevenson, “and you begin asking questions about why these things persist, and I think it inevitably leads to wanting to talk more concretely about history.” 

For Stevenson and many others, lynchings are a part of that history—one that can no longer be ignored. Only by confronting this painful past, Stevenson insists, can America move forward.

“I’m not interested in talking about America’s history because I want to punish America,” he says. “I want to liberate America.”

“In Berlin, you can’t go anywhere without seeing stones and markers dedicated to the Jewish and Roma residents who were forced from their homes and taken to the concentration camps,” Stevenson says. “In the American South, we’ve done the opposite. We’ve actually created symbols designed to make us feel great about our history, about the 19th century, about the good old days of the early 20th century.”

To help visitors further understand the role racism has played in America since colonial times, the E.J.I. also opened the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration near the memorial. It connects the dots from slavery to lynching to mass incarceration. This shows visitors how racism and racial violence persist today. Visitors are confronted with troubling statistics. One reveals that, a century and a half after the abolition of slavery, blacks are far more likely than whites to live in poverty, be imprisoned, and be killed by police.

“There are these terrible disparities in quality of life for people of color,” says Stevenson, “and you begin asking questions about why these things persist, and I think it inevitably leads to wanting to talk more concretely about history.”

For Stevenson and many others, lynchings are a part of that history. And it’s one that can no longer be ignored. Only by confronting this painful past, Stevenson insists, can America move forward.

“I’m not interested in talking about America’s history because I want to punish America,” he says. “I want to liberate America.”

With reporting by Campbell Robertson and Vanessa Gregory of The New York Times.

With reporting by Campbell Robertson and Vanessa Gregory of The New York Times.