Memorial to confront South's troubled history of lynchings (GA) [View all]
By JAY REEVES
ASSOCIATED PRESS
updated Saturday, October 1, 2016 - 5:28pm
...The nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative has announced it is building a memorial in the state capital of Montgomery devoted to 4,075 blacks its research shows were killed by lynching in the U.S. from 1877 to 1950.
The nonprofits director, Bryan Stevenson, said the aim is to help change the landscape of American racial discourse by openly acknowledging a painful past, much as Germany has Holocaust memorials and South Africa a museum on its past state-sanctioned segregation apartheid.
... the memorials focus will be on terror lynchings against blacks in a dozen Southern states whether by hanging, gunshots, beatings, burnings or other forms of killing used in the past to terrorize black communities.
I dont think we can afford to continue pretending that there arent these really troubling chapters in our history, Stevenson said. I think weve got to deal with it ...
http://onlineathens.com/features/2016-10-01/memorial-confront-souths-troubled-history-lynchings