Civil Rights Tour: Reflection #2

I wake up in the middle of the night with thoughts about our civil
rights tour in Alabama and Mississippi. I replay conversations and revisit some of the sites. I am there all over again.

Last night in the darkness, the quiet, the dead of night, I saw the 800 monuments, each one a six-foot rectangular steel box hanging from the  ceiling like upturned caskets. Each one engraved with the name of a county and the names, when known, of African American victims of lynching. More than 4000 names. 

Located in Montgomery, Alabama, this is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, better known as the Lynching Memorial, which opened in April, 2018. In the words of one writer, "it is not just a memorial; it is a confrontation."

At first one walks through the rows created by these structures. I stopped often to read the names. Sometimes only one name was listed, but sometimes, as in the case of Carroll County, Mississippi, twenty-nine names were listed. How can that be? Who has that much fear and hate and anger in their being? Too many, apparently.


As one continues to walk through the open-air memorial, the stark wooden floor begins to slope until the monuments are hanging above our heads. Think about that image. That physical sensation. 









On the last day of our trip we visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, which includes the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. While sitting in one of the exhibit rooms, I chatted (such a light word) with a young woman from Birmingham. An African American woman. She asked me where I was from, and I told her about our tour. She wanted to know if we had been to the new memorial in Montgomery and what it was like. I told her as best I could, and she said she just didn't think she could go there. I wanted to hug her, but instead, I merely touched her arm, saying, as we looked into each other's eyes, this young black woman and this old white woman, "You will know when you are ready."

I've been thinking about that brief connection in which she dared to be vulnerable, and I wish I had said, "You will know when you are ready to push yourself, to open yourself to the pain you will feel." I wish I could have heard her story, what kind of trauma she carries. I wish I could hold her hand when she is finally able to walk through that memorial. She may not have a specific lynching story in her personal history, but she holds within the trauma from all the evil done to her ancestors. As a white person, I am just beginning to realize that we are all psychologically damaged because of this violence. 

Here's a story that proves that point. You may have read the article in the Washington Post. Read here. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R, Mississippi) responded to praise from a Mississippi cattle rancher by saying, "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row." Yes, she really said that, and she made it even worse by trying to explain herself that what she said was an "exaggerated expression of regard." 

I think anyone running for public office should spend a day at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. 

The memorial is rich, intense with a variety of ways to explore what Ida B. Wells, to whom the garden at the memorial is dedicated, called "our national crime." Yes, this is a place to learn about a history that has been ignored, but it is also holy ground in which to explore one's place in this history and how the trauma of lynching, of inequality continues to affect our life as American citizens today. 

An Invitation
What images, words make you wake up in the middle of the night?

Civil Rights Tour: Reflection #1

                      

     
 Stand up and keep the light on.
      Bishop Calvin
      Woods

 














My husband Bruce and I just returned from a week long civil rights tour where we visited key civil rights sites in Alabama and Mississippi, concluding with a day in Memphis. Our group of eleven from our church was led by our passionate and knowledgeable guide, Mark Swiggum. Over the years Mark has developed relationships with many of the foot soldiers of the movement, and we had the privilege of meeting with many of them, including Bishop Calvin Woods, one of the key leaders in Birmingham, who visited with us in Birmingham's Kelly Ingram Park. 

This is the park where in May, 1963, following the orders of Bull Connor, thousands of students--CHILDREN--were assaulted with fire hoses and police dogs and then jailed. 

I stood where blood had been shed.

Sculpture of a Fire Hose

I stood where children had cried and screamed and then had been herded into paddy wagons and crowded into jail cells or cattle pens at the fairgrounds. Conditions were unspeakable. 

I stood where our brothers and sisters were treated as less than human. I stood where they declared with their bodies that enough was enough. 

Kelly Ingram Park is sacred ground. 

Each of the civil rights sites are places where we as citizens of this United States should fall on our knees and say in one voice, "We will do better. We will not allow anyone to be treated this way again. We will lift up all in our land, recommitting to the belief that all are created equal."

Along with Bishop Woods, each of the foot soldiers we met shared stories. They responded to our questions. Sometimes they lifted their voices in song, inviting us to sing, too. They reflected on the pain and trauma of those years and expressed their concerns and their hopes for the future. And, amazingly, they often articulated forgiveness, modeling a generosity of spirit that took my breath away.

I will be sorting through what I learned and felt for quite some time. More importantly, I will wrestle with what I need to do now, and I intend to share this journey with you on this blog. At the moment, however, I feel a bit shaky. Teary. Fragile. Overwhelmed. 
That's what often happens when you see what you don't want to see, when you are forced to remember what you have forgotten, when you are in the presence of ordinary people who did extraordinary things, and when you are on sacred ground.


                       Light not only warms, of course, but
                       illuminates both things we want to
                       see and don't want to see.
                                      Anne Lamott
                                      Almost Everything, Notes on Hope
                                      p.16

An Invitation
What do you remember from the civil rights movement in the 60's? I would love to know.