An overdue step towards truth, justice and reconciliation

Visiting the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Brandon del Pozo

February 6, 2019

Each of the metal boxes above is inscribed with the name of a county where a black American was murdered by lynching, and the names of those victims. The names run into the thousands. This is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, Alabama. It is the city that was both the cradle of the Confederacy and where Rosa Parks wouldn't sit at the back of the bus. The memorial opened last year.

I paid the memorial a visit yesterday. You can't help but feel a profound sense of failure and grief when you're there, especially if you have made a commitment to protect and rescue people in danger. These were thousands of murders by mobs as police, sheriffs, and the rest of the nation did little or nothing but step aside, watch, or help. They were of blacks who asked children not to throw rocks at them, or had a picture of a white woman in their hat, or didn't call a cop "mister," or stole a ham. They were acts of terrorism because they were meant to keep black citizens terrified of being killed at any time, for any perceived slight, unless they slavishly obeyed.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls. These metal boxes hanging here are as hollow as the holes left in people's souls when the ones they loved were murdered by a mob. They are also as hollow as the progress we have made in accounting for what we did to these victims as a nation, and Vermont is a part of that nation. They are as hollow as any pride in thinking we have done enough to not have to reconcile this past with our future by confronting it today.

This is not ancient history. Blacks were lynched in America through the 1950's, and as late as the 80's, and are still killed today on pretenses that would not suffice for white Americans. Is it any wonder why so many black Americans to this day think this nation doesn't love them? These lynchings are the stories of their own grandparents.

I was very humbled by my visit to Alabama. I wish everyone could go.