It was once said by Frederick Douglass that “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” And safe from those who degrade justice, we are not. 

This museum is more than just the history of the practice of enslaving Africans in America, this museum is the showing of continued oppression of African-Americans, and how oppressors reach further into the past to make the present more miserable. Despite opening in 2018, the history of the lessons this museum teaches goes far beyond the present time, being close by to one of the largest slave auction sites in the state, and a railroad that carried tens of thousands of slaves by the day in the 1800s. And even afterwards, showcases the present-day mass incarceration of African-Americans, and the disproportionate amount of Black men in prisons during the Civil Rights Movement, and today.

Learning about the injustices of African-Americans throughout history means actions can be taken by all colors and people to secure a future without privilege of skin and not to create harmful guilts and woes, but to secure a future where understanding, acknowledgement, and action are taken to bridge the divide between people in this nation together. These teachings reflect and showcase the horrors of slavery, racial terrorism, racial supremacy, and shows the unsanitized history and uncomfortable truths that we must come to recognize. 

Through painful imagery brought to life in statues, aims of reconciliation, and learning of the wrongs of the past, may this be the teachings for all to reconcile with these injustices, for a truly equitable society.

According to the NAACP, “4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S.” from 1882 to 1968, though it’s hard to tell because they weren’t ever formally recorded. Lynchings weren’t just about killings; they also “marginalized [b]lack people politically, financially, and socially.” In a world where we’ve become so desensitized to statistics, I’d like to ask you all to consider how much 4,743 really is. Imagine every single face, every single life, taken by false or minor accusations, if any at all.

On April 26, 2018, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice became America’s “first memorial” meant to honor victims of lynching and white supremacy in general. In six acres, the memorial utilizes sculpture, art, and design to “contextualize” racial terror. In the center, you’ll see a structure made of 800 steel monuments, each one representing a county where a lynching took place. The Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI, collaborated with artists like Kwame Akoto-Bamfo and Dana King to force viewers to confront racial injustice from beginning to end. We start from slavery, going to lynching, the fight for civil rights, and ending with modern police brutality.

It mattered then because no one was there to properly honor lynching victims as a collective, to properly honor deaths from unnatural causes like white hatred. It matters now because black people still haven’t received proper reparations for their mistreatment. While it seems so long ago, lynching only ended in 1968. And it was only officially recognized as a hate crime in the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, introduced in 2022. That’s only 3 years ago, where lynching gets you “no… more than 30 years” in prison.

 Remember how we discussed how long it took for justice to be served in class, how long it took for the government to take action only under extreme tragedies. The very least thing we can do is acknowledge our country’s sins and remember the martyrs who died during this turbulent time. Thank you.

Despite the desegregation of buses, interstate bus systems, one of which being Greyhound, were still segregated. Because of this, a group of white and black activists decided to protest by riding these buses together in 1961. These were the freedom riders. The first bus left Washington D.C on May 4 and the plan was to arrive in New Orleans on May 17, riding through the south which was still deeply rooted with hatred. The first few days went by uneventfully for the riders until they arrived in Alabama, a severely racist state. There were two buses, one on route to Birmingham and the other on its way to Anniston. The Anniston bus was met with a mob of about 200 white people and when they tried to escape, a bomb was thrown into the bus with the intent to kill the riders. Miraculously, all the riders survived despite the white mob holding the doors of the bus closed after the bomb had gone off. The Birmingham police gave the KKK the go ahead to attack the freedom riders and later used the fact that it was Mother’s day as an excuse as to why the violence was able to occur due to a “lack of officers”. The KKK, a hateful group that covers their face and believes in white supremacy and attacks average civilians for how they look. Some might say this bears resemblance to a certain government funded agency that is (in a way) attacking average citizens based on their appearance. It’s a hard pill to swallow, knowing that the same government that swore to protect you, is doing exactly the opposite and allowing hateful groups to commit terrible acts of violence  to anyone they deem a “threat”, especially if it's a group of peaceful protesters because we all know how dangerous people holding signs can be to those armed with hunting rifles.

“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.” Rosa Parks spoke these words more than half a century ago, after being arrested for not giving up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. It was only after six others had tried this, that the seventh, Rosa Parks, had successfully sparked the largest, and longest American boycott in recent history. Where we are right now, is where Rosa Parks made history on that bus. 

She was a 42-year-old African-American seamstress and NAACP member for over a decade who refused to give up her seat on a segregated city bus to a white rider. After her arrest, she sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a twelve and a half month, or 381 day protest organized by local Black leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., E.D. Nixon, and the Montgomery Improvement Association. The boycott, which began a few days after Parks' arrest, was a giant act of civil disobedience on the part of the Black community, refusing to ride the bus until the city relinquished its policy of racial segregation. Coordinated in carpools, and walking groups. The boycott became one of the largest mass actions of the Civil Rights Movement. So Rosa Parks showed that faith in her community, and an act as small as a mustard seed can create an unstoppable unity between people

The museum matters because it is not just a museum, but a celebration of resilience, and the simple “no” that led to the Supreme Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle (1956), which made segregation on public buses unconstitutional. The site includes a walk through of a restored 1955 city bus, and even one of the station wagons used for carpooling during the boycott. It also shows how important strategy, teamwork, and especially women were to making the movement successful. In the Children’s Wing, there’s an exhibit called the Cleveland Avenue Time Machine that teaches younger visitors about the roots of racism through a recreation of the Jim Crow Era with the goal of educating through visuals.

So it is a place for all people to experience what it meant when Rosa Parks said no. And how powerful it was to the civil rights movement.