A national memorial is planned for Montgomery, Alabama, that will list the names of the U.S.'s 4,000 lynching victims, as well as place historical markers similar to this one in each of the counties where the lynchings took place.
In the wake of last year’s mass shooting of nine African Americans at South Carolina’s Emanuel A.M.E. Church, a renewed movement arose to remove the Confederate flag from government spaces and Confederate monuments from public display.
Supporters of the monuments maintain they are simply emblematic of Southern pride and respect for their ancestors. Opponents view them as symbols of white supremacy, the fight to keep human beings as slaves, and respect for traitors to the United States. Now, a movement appears to be underway to memorialize the victims of lynching, a phenomenon that directly corresponds with the rise of the Confederacy. In Memphis, Tennessee, high school students led an effort to memorialize Eli Persons, the victim of a local lynching:
On a Sunday afternoon in May, more than 100 people gathered on a grassy knoll sandwiched between a swamp and a construction company lot on the eastern outskirts of Memphis, Tennessee. Two high school juniors, Khamilla Johnson and Khari Bowman, stood before them and described how, exactly 99 years ago, a crowd at least 50 times as large had come to this very spot to watch the lynching of a black man named Ell Persons.
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After Johnson and Bowman learned about Persons during a history class project, they and their classmates rallied around [Bryan] Stevenson's call to unearth past racial violence and recognize its modern echoes. "History repeats itself," said Justyce Knowles, a classmate of Johnson and Bowman. "We were all so upset about Sandra Bland, about Trayvon Martin, about Tamir Rice. I feel like, let's keep it trending. Let's make it a hot topic."
In Montgomery, Alabama, known as the “cradle” of the Confederacy, a new monument is being proposed that lays bare both the hypocrisy and lunacy of Confederate monuments. The monument will memorialize the 4,000 victims of lynching in the United States.
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