If I had to choose one stop on the National Civil Rights Trail, the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama is at the top of the list. We have visited a number of Civil Rights Trail sites over the years and this is one of the most powerful. The museum takes you on a journey over 400 years from enslavement to racial terrorism to codified segregation and finally the mass incarceration of today. Photos and videos are not allowed so I am reporting mostly from memory. When you first enter the museum, you experience huge ocean waves as you cross the ocean as part of the middle passage. You hear many first hand narratives-from ghosts of enslaved people waiting for auction, to a father holding his young daughter in his arms before he is dragged away from her to be sold down the river, (half of enslaved families were broken up) to people who were incarcerated as teenagers serving life without parole. You see jars of dirt holding the DNA of a fraction of the 4,400 people lynched over a 73 year period in this country.
“When we have the courage to learn the truth we open up doors that permit justice, that permit reckoning, that permit healing. This museum is dedicated to creating a society where the children of our children are no longer burdened by the legacy of slavery.”
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, standing on a hill overlooking Montgomery is a sacred, reflective space memorializing more than 800 people who were lynched. The names and dates of people who were lynched in each county are etched onto a hanging steel monument. The sheer number of counties is overwhelming, and they are not just in the South. They have gifted each county stones that can be publicly displayed in their county. Jefferson County. Alabama had 63 documented lynchings. They are planning a display in Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham.
Perspectives on the Road 
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