Montgomery, “Racial Terror” Lynching Remembrances, and Municipal Quests for American Truth and Reconciliation

Abstract

This chapter engages the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum in the heart of the former Confederacy: Montgomery, Alabama. Constructed by the Equal Justice Initiative in 2018, these darker places and space of memory are forcing locals to confront their city’s historical role in the horrors of slavery and lynching. Like other transnational cities that have confronted darker genocidal pasts, such as Berlin and Johannesburg, the EJI is activating forgotten memoryscapes for needs in the present by specifically encouraging audiences to consider the ways the legacy of racial terrorism has penetrated the criminal justice system.