In April, I had the honor of attending the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Ala. Most people refer to it as the National Lynching Memorial.
The privately funded museum and memorial are dedicated to the victims of white predominance in the United States, chronicling the history of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement in America, memorializing those who did not survive either.
Any Southern man or woman of age knows well the history of white supremacy in our region. Those truths are thoroughly documented at the memorial and museum.
Since 1994, researchers with the Equal Justice Initiative have gathered details on the “racial terror lynching” of more than 4,200 Americans on U.S. soil between the years 1877 and 1950. This solemn place is the culmination of that work. Near the museum’s entrance hall a sign reads: In 1860 there were more slave-trading houses in Montgomery than churches or hotels.
I was drawn to the examples of lynching in my own state’s history. I’ve heard several stories before, but to see the depth of it on display was soul-wrenching, and difficult to understand.
Scanning the walls as I entered the museum, I immediately saw an enlargement of the famous photo of Elizabeth Eckford walking through a jeering crowd at Central High School with her head high and her books in her arms.
While not visible in the photo, I knew that my own mother had been a member of that crowd in 1957. I was there too, inside her womb, mere months before my birth. A recent Central graduate, my mother was one of thousands who objected to the desegregation allowing black students to attend her alma mater.
As I made my way through the room toward the photo, 76-year-old Ms. Eckford appeared before it. The room erupted with cheers and applause as she stood in front of the ceiling-to-floor enlargement of her image. She acknowledged the recognition but did not speak.
One wall in the museum has jars of dirt taken from lynching sites. All are labeled with to whom and where the event happened. News clips play on big screens in several sections.
While watching one of the screens, an older black gentleman near me had a heart attack. A portion of the museum had to be closed as paramedics rushed in and worked to save his life.
The history displayed is overwhelmingly shocking to say the least. The excuses, besides obvious hate? Times were different. After studying the facts, contemplating the horrors and atrocities I observed at The Legacy Museum, I walked the few blocks to The National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
The six-acre national park in downtown Montgomery near where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus has been transformed into a national memorial.
Upon entering, the first thing you see are full-size statues of Africans in chains, with rust from the chains impersonating blood dripping from the necks, arms, and legs of the statues. Upon entering the memorial square, there are 800 coffin-style displays aligned so you can see the long rows from nearly any angle. Each box represents a county in America where a racial lynching occurred, with each victim’s name and the date cut into the metal. The farther you walk into the square, the farther down the path descends, raising the coffins higher and higher.
The first recorded Arkansas lynching was in August 1836, two months after we became a state. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture lists more than 350 people lynched in 51 of the 75 Arkansas counties.
One of the first boxes I encountered was for Hot Spring County, one lynching victim. Nearby was Lonoke County, 11 lynching victims.
As the walkway changed direction I noticed Elizabeth Eckford and her family standing beneath the memorial box for Pulaski County. This box bears five names. Ms. Eckford was telling the story she had heard of John Carter, the last name listed, lynched May 4, 1927.
The body of a murdered 12-year-old white had been discovered in the belfry of the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Little Rock. Two men were arrested for the murder and taken to Texarkana to await trial.
An angry crowd gathered as news of the crime spread through the city. Once they learned that the suspects had been transferred to another jail, the mob went searching for what they would consider more immediate justice.
For four days the mob gathered, growing to 5,000 white men, woman, and children—more than six percent of Little Rock’s population at the time. Their anger built accordingly and soon the vigilantes were out for blood.
The mob discovered John Carter in the area near where the Big Rock interchange stands today. They strung Carter over a telephone pole and shot him. Then they tied his body to the back of a car and drove it through the neighborhoods of Little Rock, ending at Ninth and Broadway, the center of the town’s black community.
The mob then broke into black businesses and churches, tearing out doors, counters, and pews to build a pyre on top of John Carter’s body. A fire was lit and some danced around it for hours, screaming obscenities. It took the intervention of the Arkansas National Guard to end the mayhem.
No one was ever charged with Carter’s murder or the damage and vandalism that followed. Ms. Eckford said the murder reinforced an undertone in Little Rock’s black community. In her words: “It was a warning for the blacks to not be out after dark or to be in the white areas of the city unless invited.”
Ms. Eckford’s voice has stayed with me in the months since. I consider it an honor to have been in her space and to hear her voice.
A goal of the Equal Justice Initiative is for every county represented at the memorial to claim identical copies of its marker to take home for placement and recognition.
The mass lynching of 229 people during one week of October 1919 in Elaine is one of the most notorious misdeeds in our state’s history. No one was ever held accountable.
In a state with Confederate monuments and a stone carving of the Ten Commandments on the Capitol lawn, why not also embrace a monument to those who suffered needless and unjust deaths at the hands of their fellow Arkansans? It is as much a part of our heritage as the Civil War or Christianity.
Arkansas lawmakers should send a delegation to Montgomery and retrieve all the memorials representing Arkansas counties. Place Pulaski County’s on the Capitol lawn next to the Ten Commandments, reminding everyone how we have historically fallen short of those concepts that guide people of faith.
Bringing these memorials home will help us face this horrible part of our history and ensure that it will never be repeated. A clear understanding of our past creates a clearer path toward our shared future.
Jerry Fitzpatrick of Saline County is a published author, owner of Cowboy Buddha Publishing, and an entertainment tour bus driver.