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A Memorial for Lynching Victims.


The Dryad

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I don't know if anyone has heard of The Legacy Museum yet, it's still pretty new, it opened around five months ago. Basically, it's a memorial for lynching victims from after the Civil War and also talks about the continuation of slavery as "slavery" through mass incarceration.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/406177/

 

One thing that Kanye West did get right is the significance of the 13th Amendment (I mean, don't abolish it)- it should be changed so that all peoples are free, in prison or not. The racial bias and history or the U.S. allows for "loopholes" in the system to where white criminals and black criminals, will look as very different sentencing despite having done the same crime, nevermind the bias that will unfairly rule against minority criminals compared to white criminals despite the severity of the crime.

 

Although having a memorial of lynching victims is good for American history, is it too early to have an exhibit on mass incarceration since it's an ongoing problem? Or is it meant to educate the masses?

 

Anywho, I digress, I'm thinking of asking my mom if she wants to go visit to exhibit- Lester Holt on Nightly News did, and found his grandfather's name, part of the ongoing struggle of the after effects of slavery and being multiracial is how your family was marked down in the census, so I suppose it'll be hard, emotionally and mentally.

 

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2 hours ago, The Dryad said:

Although having a memorial of lynching victims is good for American history, is it too early to have an exhibit on mass incarceration since it's an ongoing problem? Or is it meant to educate the masses?

Education is always necessary, and education must not be based solely on historical examples. I think it is both, educate the masses on both the historical side of it (lynching) and present side of it (convict labour, etc.). I am personally glad that people continue to talk about lynching, although we must discuss it more to educate all Americans. Without falling into a political nuclear war; lynching memorials are something America needs, we have confederate statues so we must memorialize the victims, both of their era and of the present, of their racism.

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We obviously need to address these issues.  A memorial won't fix the damage, but it's a step in the right direction.

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On the upside, maybe when people point to statistics now and say ignorant things like "black people are more prone to violence", or "black people commit more crimes", they will be informed that the system has been biased against black people since after the Civil War (to re-enslave black people), if I'm not mistaken prisoners picked cotton up until the 1990's? Which were predominantly black- coincidence? I think not.

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RoseGoesToYale

I think any kind of exposure of the problem of mass incarceration is needed, and a museum exhibit is an excellent choice. We tend to think of exhibits as showing what happened in the past, as a way of stepping back to that time to see what it was like. But because this issue is still ongoing, people are stepping into the now and becoming familiar with how the system works against people of color, and they have to get up close to the concept rather than just reading about prisons in the news. I know too many people who'll see a black boy walking down the street and say "He's up to no good", and they have no idea what they're saying and why they're saying it, they're just parroting what they hear from arrest stories. I could try to tell them otherwise myself, but it usually takes more than that. Museums make people curious, even curious enough to examine things they never would have.

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My rabbi took a group of fellow congregants down to Montgomery this summer to see the museum and they came back deeply affected.  Many of those who went down South in the 50s and 60s were Jews but they are dying out, so everyone who went this year hadn't experienced those years.  They say the site which memorializes those who were lynched conveys both beauty and tragedy: columns stretching down from the ceiling with names on them, each column ending many feet above the floor...   My rabbi has written an article for our city newspaper supporting reparations.  

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

I think a memorial is a very good first step into educating people to behave properly towards each other. I remember being very moved (and angry) when I first saw the Highland Clearances memorial in Helmsdale and the painting 'Last of the clan' in Kelvingrove Museum. It works, so uuse it! Hope you get a memorial made  soon.

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