Montgomery (1/8/2023)

Bob and I left Austin on Saturday. Rather than a direct route, we mapped a slower route to North Carolina as we have a few days before meeting up with our next homeowner. Saturday, we drove about 6 hours (our preferred driving maximum) to Scott (basically, Lafayette), Louisiana. We got there late afternoon in time to pick up some food (a couple items Cajun based!) at the local grocery for dinner and chill in the room.

Yesterday, Sunday, we drove in and out of rain for another 6 hour journey to Montgomery, Alabama, but we started out a little before 7am as we had timed entry tickets for 3:00 pm for the Legacy Museum and we hoped to walk around Montgomery a bit before heading to the museum.

I had purchased tickets for us online for the National Peace and Justice Memorial and it also came with tickets to the Legacy Museum. At the time of purchase I hadn’t noticed that the 2 sites were a 20 minute walk apart. I didn’t actually learn that until we got into our room in Montgomery yesterday to try to plan our time. We decided then that we needed to head right to the memorial in order to make our timed entry at the museum which closed at 5 and wouldn’t reopen again until Wednesday.

The entry into The Renaissance Hotel in Montgomery.
Our four hotel stays during this break are free
due to the 2 hotel programs we participate in.

A view of downtown Montgomery from our room

We headed off to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, about a 10 minute walk from the hotel. This is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to capturing the impact of the enslavement and lynchings of Black people throughout the United States. It opened in 2018 and provides an impactful depiction of the lives lost through lynching and names the individuals killed, mostly but exclusively in the South, and the county in which the murder occurred.

The main part of the memorial as you enter from a lower level.

The memorial begins with a walk providing information
and depictions of the human trafficking of Africans to the New World for slavery, their enslavement, and the history of lynchings.

A sculpture depicting the abduction of Africans for transport to the New World to help build Europe’s new colonies.

The memorial consists mostly of metal blocks depicting the names of the individuals known to have been lynched in the identified county and state.

As you walk through the memorial, the blocks go from being on the ground to hanging above you. While the placement depicts the physical location of where the lynched person would be, it also seemed to give the feeling of a weight hanging over us from these horrific acts.

The walls of the memorial were also lined with information on specific cases. Note the long rectangular strips with words on the bottom.

A sample case. This one from the Midwest.

Before heading outside to see the rest of the memorial, we were left with this.

Looking down from the memorial to other sculptures,
reckoning plaques, and into downtown.

Since the metal boxes in the memorial aren’t hung alphabetically, they have duplicates outside by state that make it easier to find. Here is the one for Travis County, Texas, home of Austin, the capital.

This a a copy of a reckoning plaque that are put up throughout the country talking about lynchings that occurred in that county.
Again, this is the one for Travis County, Texas.

The memorial and museum offer a free shuttle between the two sites since they are a 20 minute walk apart. Normally, we would have preferred to walk but with the rain and wanting to maximize time at both places, we took advantage of the service. The Legacy Museum was just as impressive as the memorial. It’s a multi-media experience covering the everything from the abduction and transportation from Africa through enslavement, emancipation, Jim Crow laws and segregation to Civil Rights Movement into today. It begins by providing an immersive experience of the dangerous cross Atlantic journey which resulted in 2 million Africans dying at sea and being thrown into the Atlantic.

We only have one photo from the museum, however, as no photos or videos are permitted once you enter. It is obviously not a light subject, but Bob and I would both recommend it.