Montgomery — Slavery, Confederacy & Civil Rights
National Memorial for Peace and Justice
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Transcript
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in 2018. It is dedicated to victims of racial terror lynching and the broader history of racial violence in the United States.
The central structure contains more than eight hundred steel monuments, one for each county or county-equivalent where EJI documented racial terror lynchings. Names of victims are inscribed when known.
As you move through the memorial, the steel forms shift in relation to the floor until they hang overhead. The architecture turns a data set into physical experience without reproducing graphic violence.
EJI has documented more than 4,400 Black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950. The killings were not merely private acts of hatred. They helped enforce a racial order by terrorizing entire communities, suppressing political participation and driving migration.
Duplicate county monuments are displayed outside with the intention that communities may claim and install them locally after engaging in remembrance work. The memorial is therefore designed to send history back outward rather than centralize it permanently in Montgomery.
End with the names, not the perpetrators. That editorial choice matters. Racial terror historically gave violent white actors enormous power over public space and memory. The memorial reverses the attention: counties must face the people who were killed there.
This is not the end of Montgomery’s story. It is a demand that the country locate itself within it.