Lynching Memorial is making some people uncomfortable.

[RandySF]

NOTE: IF ONLY WE GET BEYOND IDENTITY POLITICS" AND REACH OUT TO THESE PEOPLE. ALL THEY NEED ARE JOBS AND EVERYONE WILL JOIN HANDS.


Black men were lynched for “standing around”, for “annoying white girls”, for failing to call a policeman “mister”. Those are just a few of the horrific stories on display at a new national memorial to lynching victims in Montgomery, Alabama.

One mile away, another historical monument tells a very different tale about the American south: the First White House of the Confederacy celebrates the life of “renowned American patriot” Jefferson Davis, who served as the president of the Confederate states, while making virtually no mention of the hundreds of black people he and his family enslaved.

“It’s going to cause an uproar and open old wounds,” said Mikki Keenan, a 58-year-old longtime Montgomery resident, who was eating lunch at a southern country-style restaurant a mile from the memorial. Local residents, she said, feel “it’s a waste of money, a waste of space and it’s bringing up bullshit”.The contradictions of Montgomery’s historical narratives were on full display this week as thousands of tourists and progressive activists flocked to the city to mark the opening of the country’s first memorial to lynching victims – while some locals quietly seethed, saying they resented the new museum for dredging up the past and feared it would incite anger and backlash within black communities.

“It keeps putting the emphasis on discrimination and cruelty,” chimed in her friend, who asked not to be named for fear that her child would disapprove of her remarks. The memorial, she added, could spark violence.

The angry and in some cases blatantly racist reactions to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and accompanying Legacy Museum provided a window into some white Americans’ deep resistance to confronting the nation’s brutal history of racial violence, from slavery to mass incarceration.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/lynching-memorial-leaves-some-quietly-seething-let-sleeping-dogs-lie/ar-AAwsi6f?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

[DBoon]

1. Good

If it makes people uncomfortable, it is effective

[yardwork]

25. +1

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Good. It's supposed to.

[Laffy Kat]

3. I sure hope it makes people uncomfortable.

Hopefully it will also make people reflect. It's kind of the point. Friggin' snowflakes.

[catrose]

4. Er...it's supposed to?

[RockRaven]

5. "I don't care if my ignorance is intentional..."

"I'm gonna look at the past through rose-colored glasses dammit!"

[struggle4progress]

6. Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans

... A month after World War I ended, Private Charles Lewis returned home to Tyler Station, Kentucky, where a mob of masked men lynched him on December 16, 1918. Private Lewis was wearing his uniform when he encountered Deputy Sheriff Al Thomas, who attempted to arrest him for robbery. Private Lewis denied guilt and pointed to his uniform, declaring that he had been honorably discharged and had never committed a crime. The two men argued and Private Lewis was charged with assault and resisting arrest.79 Private Lewis was awaiting transfer to the Fulton County Jail in Hickman, Kentucky, as news of his challenge to white authority spread and a mob of 75 to 100 people formed. At midnight, masked men stormed the jail, smashed the locks with a sledgehammer, pulled Private Lewis out of his cell, tied a rope around his neck, and hanged him from a tree ...

https://eji.org/reports/online/lynching-in-america-targeting-black-veterans

[ProudLib72]

7. The consensus among these people is it's better to forget the past

That worries me. Most of those who oppose the memorial feel those days are over, but that is not so. Racism is alive and well in the south because they cannot move on (refuse to move on). If only they could recognize the work they need to do, but it must mean accepting where they came from and who they are today. They must sever their connection with the "tradition", and most of them are unwilling to do so.

[TheBlackAdder]

11. Yet, they want to remember the confederacy and hang those symbols from their clothes, homes, trucks.

[misanthrope]

22. I know, right?

You just can't make up this stuff! It's like the rantings of the insane.

[elehhhhna]

26. They're saying don't tell the black people this stuff they might get uppity.

I can hear that in every quote...

[ProudLib72]

29. That plus, "Not a big deal. It's in the past. No reason to talk about it now."

I just keep thinking about Germany's reaction to WWII and Nazism. They own it. They have memorials. But that was a national decision. Unfortunately, our national decision was to elect a racist asshole for president so he can perpetuate the ideals of white supremacy.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. What revealing comments by the white folks.

"feared it would incite anger and backlash within black communities."... guilt much?

"putting the emphasis on discrimination and cruelty"..again, guilt.

"Fear that her child would disapprove of her remarks. " shhh..don't tell my kids I am a bigot

I am pretty sure her kid knows this already.

[misanthrope]

23. Yet they chastise "libruls" for their "white guilt"

Too rich!

[struggle4progress]

9. A lynching kept out of sight

Pvt. Felix Hall was strung up in a jackknife position in a shallow ravine ...

For months after his body was discovered, military authorities told the public that Hall’s death may have been a suicide, though a military physician who examined the body within two weeks of its recovery ruled it a homicide and put that on Hall’s death certificate.

According to the official record, Hall’s decomposing body was discovered by an engineer regiment on a training exercise six weeks after the killing. But in an interview earlier this year, a retired social worker who grew up on base revealed that her stepfather had found the body of a black man hanging in the same location in the woods in early 1941 and that he had reported it. There is no mention of such a report in the file ...

In the reports compiled by the FBI and the War Department, there is no record of investigators asking Hall’s friends and cousins whether they had looked for him after he disappeared or whether they suspected foul play. Nor is there any record in the investigation file that Fort Benning officials notified authorities in Hall’s home town that he had vanished, although such notifications were routine practice in the case of missing soldiers ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/09/02/the-story-of-the-only-known-lynching-on-a-u-s-military-base/?utm_term=.93cd867af641

[FreepFryer]

10. As we say about such people in Georgia, bless their hearts. (n/t)

[thucythucy]

12. Jefferson Davis was a "renowned American patriot"????

More like a renowned traitor who sought to destroy the nation that had made possible his political career.

And how is it that a memorial to those victims who suffered lynching is "dredging up the past" while one glorifying a slave-owning traitor complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of his countrymen isn't?

But I was heartened to hear one of these folks didn't want her child to know about her views.

I'm pinning so many of my hopes on these next generations.

[potone]

13. So am I.

They are all that give me hope these days. I still can't get my mind around how low we have sunk, and how hateful and unpatriotic the Republicans in Congress are. Trump is clearly unfit to be president, and his cabinet appointees are a disgrace. I wonder every single day how much more of this we will all have to go through. It is quite literally making me sick.

[misanthrope]

24. Regarding "hopes" pinned on "these next generations"

People have been saying that for more than half a century now. It is getting better but nearly at the rate we hoped, not even close. Granted, we don't have whole towns, hundreds and thousands at a time turn out to watch lynchings anymore -- not that they wouldn't gleefully attend court-ordered executions if possible -- but those events ended before the Civil Rights Act.

A lot of that is facilitated by what a pal of mine optimistically calls "the great mocha-fication of America." The more traditional white culture loses its stranglehold, the better it gets.

The issue in the South is the culture. The vagaries of it are perfectly suited for resisting change and dragging as many into the past as possible. That's what's going to have to change and that's a tough nut to crack.

[ancianita]

14. White acknowledgement of the worst results of white fear and hate are humble pie medicine for

whites who believe they're entitled to forgiveness. Hell yes, they're uncomfortable.

When a country takes its reconciliation medicine, the disease sometimes makes the body politic feel worse before it feels better and actually starts to get better.

[askyagerz]

15. We need more uncomfortable people in this country

Everything is so whitewashed its hard for the not so bright to learn from the past or present.

[lunatica]

16. Racists need to go back under The rocks they came from

Really! There is no excuse for them!

[blue-wave]

17. It's about time and

long overdue for this memorial.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

18. Good. It should make people uncomfortable.

[whathehell]

19. Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted!

Beyond that, the Democratic Party is rooted in economic AND social justice -- Those who understand this wouldn't jump to the thoroughly baseless conclusion that there are, or were, plans to exchange one for the other....Just sayin'.

[George II]

20. People should feel more than just uncomfortable, they should feel ashamed.

[BobTheSubgenius]

21. Anyone that was OK with this, and the message and stories behind it,

is definitely lodged deeply in that basket of deplorables.

[misanthrope]

27. There's nothing surprising in this story

As the memorial opened over the last few days, I've gone back and forth with the few liberal friends I have scattered around the region. We all knew how it would be received by the regular person on the street.

We wondered aloud how long before it would be defaced? Certainly the caretakers have been cagey enough to budget for round-the-clock security.

Each hanging marker in the memorial bears the name of a county and a listing of those lynched there, along with the dates. It also has a "twin" on site, ringing the memorial itself. Each of those "twin" markers are available for the counties to claim and display at home as a way to "own" these acts of terrorism and attempt to come to grips with it.

My friends and I wondered how many counties might claim their "twin." I postulated very few unless those counties happen to be controlled by black-majority officialdom.

Then there are counties like the Alabama county in which I currently reside. Folks here have fabricated a fairy tale about the relative Civil Rights peacefulness and amiability between the races. They point to Birmingham, Anniston, Selma and Montgomery and say, "See, we had none of that. Everything was fine here."

The truth is, things weren't fine. Sure it wasn't as bad as the very worst, but it wasn't what they claim either. Jim Crow still ruled. Change came even later here. Schools weren't officially desegregated until the 1970s then "seg academies" became proliferate.

The Lost Cause still roams the streets here, rides with the racially segregated Mardi Gras societies, laces through the pillars of the antebellum homes, drapes across the Confederate statuary and clops beside the city ambassadors who dress in Scarlett O'Hara-style hoop skirts.

In places like this, they'll never claim their "twin" marker and if it did end up here, far too many would prefer it stay hidden.

[secondwind]

28. Coming to terms with this horrific past, it SHOULD dredge up and spark any feelings that a person

MUST FEEL. It is necessary and long awaited.

Whatever it is.... shame, tears, sadness, anger, whatever.. let it out.

[byronius]

30. It's doing something important, then. It has the effect it was intended to have.

I've always been amazed by the ability of conservatives to completely ignore African American history while pretending to understand it. Just like they take that one line from MLK and discard the rest of his work.

The generational effects of the stress black people have been under will be redressed one day if there is justice in the universe. And conservatism as a poisonous creed will fade and die, or we will all die.

[BannonsLiver]

33. They love MLK because he's dead

An MLK that lived another 30 years would be viewed by conservatives the same they view Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in the present. In short, they would have hated his guts.

[Volaris]

31. ' it's bringing up bullshit'

They'd rather not look at what they perpetrated on America...As long as it's long buried in history they can continue to believe their own fox - induced idiocy.
Jefferson Davis an American patriot sums up that will g idiocy rather nicely, as well.

[ThoughtCriminal]

32. "...asked not to be named for fear that her child would disapprove of her"

Instead of forgetting history, it is the people who are uncomfortable with it that will be forgotten.

[peggysue2]

34. Battle of the Narratives

The whole Noble, Lost Cause storyline is both false and obsolete. If people feel uncomfortable then I'd say the exhibit is definitely rattling the traditional myth factory. I've seen pictures of the museum and the exhibits are powerful, the statuary profound. As far as dredging up the past? The past has never been fully revealed or exposed, so the past is still alive and well and completely cock-eyed.

Concerns of sparking violence? Really. That's a cowardly excuse.

Let the gates open. Let people see and judge for themselves.

[onethatcares]

35. we are not the shining city on the hill

we, as a nation, should be more than uncomfortable.

No matter what part of the country we come from.

[thucythucy]

36. Yeah, well, getting lynched was pretty damned "uncomfortable" as well.

Why would you feel "uncomfortable" unless you also felt somehow complicit?