Words Matter: Thursday's Reflection

Lynching.

Last fall ten of us from our congregation traveled in Alabama and Mississippi as part of a Civil Rights Tour led by our guide Mark Swiggum, whose mission is to promote anti-racism education. 

One of the most profound and powerful stops was at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial, also known as the Lynching Memorial, in Montgomery, Alabama. Completed in 2018, this memorial was developed by Bryan Stephenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. 

Here's what we learned.

Lynching was used as an instrument of terror and intimidation 4082 times between 1877 and 1950, but many more lynchings were undocumented. 

This was white terrorism used to maintain white supremacy. 

Often a lynching drew crowds of thousands and was a time when people brought families, including children, to experience the event as a festive celebration. Walking into this open air exhibit, however, was like stepping onto the grounds of a concentration or extermination camp in Germany. One felt the need to whisper, to become very quiet, for this is a sacred place.














Casket shaped steel boxes standing on end were arranged in rows.  The names of people who were lynched and the county where they were lynched are engraved on the boxes. The metal, as its corrodes, drips rust-colored drops on the oak wood flooring, suggesting tears and blood. 

Moving along, the floor slanted downwards and gradually the boxes are suspended overhead. We became part of the twisted crowd taking in the spectacle of intimidation. And death. 

On plaques lining the memorial we read,

"Hundreds of black men, women, and children were lynched in the Elaine Massacre in Phillips County, Arkansas in 1919.

"Dozens of men, women, and children were lynched in a massacre in East St Louis, Illinois in 1917.

"Seven black men were lynched near Screamer, Alabama in 1888 for drinking from a white man's well.

"Jesse Thornton was lynched in Luverne, Alabama in 1940 for addressing a white police officer without the title 'mister.'

"Elias Clayton, Isaac McGhie, and Elmer Jackson were lynched by a mob of 10,000 people in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1920."


This is lynching. 

Words matter. 

An Invitation
If you feel outrage by the misuse of this word, what will you do? I would love to know. 

NOTE: I adapted the text for this post from the script several of us from the tour wrote and presented to church groups after our return from the trip. 

For more reflections on this Civil Rights Tour read my earlier posts: November 13, 15, and 20, 2018.