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A Strange & Bitter Crop
A Tour of the National Memorial for Peace & Justice
Author’s Note: This story was originally published in January 2020. Since then, many things have changed in our nation. One thing that has not changed, as evidenced by the lack of any meaningful public outcry to the senseless murder of Ahmaud Arbery prior to the incriminating video evidence emerging last week, is our unwillingness to admit to the lingering poisonous ideas of racial difference that continue to plague us. We have to do better. ~5/8/2020.
The first thing you notice is not the quiet, because it isn’t quiet. People are chatting, laughing and smiling. The sounds of the city surround you. But there’s an uncomfortable sense of unease in the noise, too. In the same way that people sometimes laugh too loudly at jokes that aren’t funny, to avoid an awkward silence, the chatter and hum of the city has a nervousness to it.
This is Montgomery, Alabama, after all, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice has only been open for a year. The city around it still hasn’t fully adjusted, as if a foreign body has taken up residence, and the old City still hasn’t come to terms with the ghosts that have begun rising from the red clay it was built on. These are ghosts most people thought were long gone, after all.
