Visiting the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
in Montgomery, Alabama
by Alexa Fraser
Photos of EJI's Legacy Museum by Holly Syrakkos
A few years ago some Montgomery Lynching Memorial Project (MoCoLMP) friends and I went to Montgomery, Alabama to see the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. One of our group had seen it in its previous location but the others had no vision of what we might experience.
We walked toward the museum and saw a reflecting pond. I had grown up in Washington, D.C. and knew what a reflecting pond was, or thought I did. But this one was different. Coming out of the water, emerging from its depths, are deeply realistic bronze figures of enslaved Africans. There are men, women and children. I was transfixed.
Then we walked into the actual exhibit. The first room plunged me into the start of the Middle Passage. I heard the sound of waves and after a moment of disorientation I realized that they crashed on the wall in front of me. The whole wall filled with violent waves, part of the ocean we'd cross to pull me away from my home land for the rest of my life. I sat for many minutes in a corner just feeling the waves and the truth of slavery at its extraction point.
There was more, so much more. I hope you go visit these museums if you can. Plan on several days for your trip, and expect it to land hard. It did for me. And of course look deeply at the walls of soil collected by EJI Partners. Among many other jars of soil are the soil containers collected by MoCoLMP at the sites of the three known lynchings in our county. Look for the names George Peck, John Diggs-Dorsey and Sidney Randolph. All were on display when I was there. We call them Mr. Peck, Mr Diggs-Dorsey and Mr. Randolph. Say their names.
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