National Memorial for Peace and Justice

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is a national memorial to commemorate the victims of lynching in the United States. The monument also acknowledges past racial terrorism and advocates for social justice in America.

The Memorial was built near the former slave-market site in Montgomery, where enslaved African Americans were sold.

The Memorial was inspired by the examples of the Memorials to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The memorial square is made up of 805 hanging steel rectangles, the size, and the shape of coffins. These names and represent each of the counties and their states where a documented lynching took place in the United States.

The names and dates of documented victims are engraved on the panels. More than 4075 documented lynchings of African Americans took place between 1877 and 1950.

Laid in rows on the ground are steel columns corresponding to those hanging in the Memorial.

The Equal Justice Initiative is asking representatives of each of the counties to claim their monument and establish a memorial on home ground to lynching victims.

In the landscaped outside the monument are benches where visitors can sit to reflect. These are dedicated to commemorating activists such as journalist Ida B. Wells.

Wells in the 1890s risked her life to report that lynchings were more about the economic competition between blacks and whites than actual assaults by blacks of whites.

The Memorial was built by the “Equal Justice Initiative” and the related “Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration” opened the same day.

“Rise Up” by Hank Willis Thomas

Highlights of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

The Memorial Square – with 805 hanging steel rectangles, the size, and shape of coffins
“Rise Up” by Hank Willis Thomas – a sculpture that features a wall, from which emerge statues of blackheads and bodies raising their arms in surrender
“Nkyinkim” by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo – outdoor sculpture dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Transatlantic slave trade
The Equal Justice Initiative – a non-profit organization that provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes and others who may have been denied a fair trial
The Memorial’s design – evokes the image of a racist hanging, featuring scores of dark metal columns suspended in the air from above
The rectangular steel column structures – with the names of counties where lynchings occurred, plus dates and the names of the victims – the goal is for individual counties to claim the columns on the ground and erect their memorials.