Consider This from NPR - Facing History At The National Memorial For Peace And Justice

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

There's a battle raging over the telling and teaching of Black history in the United States. Much of that fight has been playing out in schools. School board meetings erupt into fights as critics attack the teaching of what they call critical race theory or charge that teaching about racism is too upsetting to white children or casts students either as oppressors or the oppressed.At the heart of these arguments is a much larger issue - whether or not the country can face the truth about its painful legacy of systemic racism. In Montgomery, Alabama the National Memorial for Peace and Justice is dedicated to acknowledging America's history of racial terrorism factually, honestly, and completely. Civil rights attorney and memorial founder, Bryan Stevenson, believes that embracing this truth is the only path to healing.We tour the memorial with Stevenson, hear some of the stories immortalized there and discuss the ongoing battle over how students should be taught about race.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Well, good morning. The August 12, 2021 meeting of the Alabama State Board of Education will now come to order. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey looked out over an auditorium flanked by the state superintendent, Eric Mackey, and the eight members of Alabama's Board of Education. She opened the meeting up to public comment. Good morning to everyone, Governor Ivey, Dr. Mackey, and all the members of the board. Thank you for allowing us to speak. I am speaking on the same resolution that everyone else has. The resolution on the table was the preservation of intellectual freedom and non-discrimination in Alabama's public schools. My concern is that there is a disconnect between the title of the resolution

and the content of the resolution. The resolution stipulated that the school board would not support the use of any education resources that could be used to, quote, indoctrinate students in social or political ideologies that promote one race or sex above another, unquote. Teachers in every school system across the country and across this state must have the right to teach history as it happened. Speakers stepped up to denounce the resolution as misleading in general, and more specifically, as an attack on the ability to teach Black history.

Your resolution states that slavery and racism are betrayals of the founding principles of the United States. This statement in itself is false. But others praised the measure as a way to take a stand against what they called critical race theory. That's a graduate-level academic concept that Superintendent Eric Mackey has repeatedly stated is not being taught in Alabama's K-12 public schools. But the pushback, well, that went on. I am here to say that it is being taught in today's schools. Whites are villains. Blacks and Browns are victims. Whites are guilty. Blacks, no matter what, you're racist. That's what's being taught.

The Alabama resolution passed with a 7-2 vote. Two months later, at another contentious meeting, the Board of Education adopted an amended Alabama Administrative Code that would give parents, quote, access to instructors and the opportunity to review the programs and materials to be utilized, unquote. Vote carries. Yes, ma'am. Vote carries. You're out of order. You're out of order. Please be seated.

Intense battles like this have been taking place in states and localities across the country as critics mount an assault on what they call critical race theory or wokeness in education. But whatever they call it, at its heart, it is a debate about our shared history and what the nation's children should be taught about it. And nowhere is that question more fraught than when it comes to questions about race. According to the education outlet Chalkbeat, at least 36 states have adopted or introduced laws or policies that restrict teaching about race and racism. I'm hoping that we've gotten to the point now where people will see it as the kind of desperate act at blocking access

to information that it is. Consider this. This country is in a fight over history and how it should be taught. In Montgomery, Alabama, civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson has joined the fight with a memorial and a museum that make a powerful argument that confronting America's history of racial terrorism factually, honestly, and completely is the path to healing that painful legacy. That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Michelle Martin. It's Saturday, March 5th. It's Consider This from NPR.

Last week, we visited Montgomery, Alabama, considered the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, and it was also the first capital of the Confederacy and a principal site of the slave trade in the state. Civil rights attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Brian Stevenson, wanted to make sure that part of history was remembered as well. The building that we are sitting in is on the site of a former warehouse where enslaved people were held before being sold. And that history had not been discussed anywhere. Some people would describe these as lost histories. But to Bryan Stevenson, they are buried truths. When I look at the history of truth-telling in this country, it usually comes from people who

have to find their own way to get the truth out. Black newspapers, black activism, black funeral homes, and places where you could do things because there was that capacity to make your own decisions. Stevenson knows that there are people who are deeply invested in ignoring and even denying the very truths he wanted to tell through building the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial to commemorate more than 4,400 black men, women, and children who were lynched in the United States between 1877 and the 1950s. When we got the pushback from the established historical organizations, I realized we were going to deal with forces that just didn't want this to happen. And not only did I realize we'd have to fund it ourselves, the other thing we did was we were very covert. We didn't tell anybody what we were doing.

What did people think you were doing up there on that hill? Building a gym? I mean, I don't know, it's a big footprint. What did people think you were doing? I think they thought we were doing a civil rights space. And we've made civil rights so benign in many parts of this country that that didn't scare them. Because the narrative is, oh, civil rights is behind us. And this is my critique sometimes. I hear people talking about the civil rights movement, and it sounds like a three-day carnival. It has this kind of narrative arc where on day one, Rosa Parks didn't give up her seat on a bus, and she was nice and

sweet and kind. And day two, Dr. King led a march on Washington. And on day three, we changed all the laws and racism was over. And if that's the narrative, nobody has a problem with that. But the memorial and affiliated museum tell a story that doesn't just live in the past. It's a story that lives on in the lives of descendants, and, Steveson argues, lives on in habits of mind and policies of the state that shape too many lives today. And that is the story that certain lawmakers, school boards, parents, and activists across the country are trying to silence by telling teachers what they can and cannot teach and removing books from curricula and libraries. They often make the argument that this history is too upsetting to white children, that it undermines patriotism and casts students either as oppressors or the

oppressed. So I asked Stevenson what he thinks of this moment. I think it is consistent with the reaction to racial justice advocacy throughout American history. In every instance when people are saying what you're doing is wrong, there has been an effort to silence. And that's why most people don't know anything about the anti-literacy laws that shaped the lives of Black people during the 19th century. It was illegal for Black people, whether you were free or enslaved, to learn to read. And you step back and you think, why would someone do that? Why in our country would we actually ban education in America? And we did it throughout most of the 19th century. But when you understand that,

you begin to understand, oh, wait, a lot of people in power are really committed to maintaining ignorance and isolation to sustain the power. And that's what you see during the 20th century. And this is another manifestation of that. I think it is desperate, not to say that it's ineffective. I think it is an example of the way in which people understand that the only way they can maintain some of these false ideas about racial hierarchy, about human worth, about inequality, is by keeping people ignorant, banning them from the ideas that are so powerful that once you're exposed to the ideas, you can no longer hear the things the same way. And that's what gives me confidence that it won't succeed, that it will not prevail.

Coming up, we take a tour of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and hear some of the stories immortalized there. The site of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice is sprawling and stunning, with beautiful greenery and hills that overlook the city of Montgomery. Bryan Stevenson agreed to give us a tour of the compound, which is sometimes just called the Lynching Memorial. Why is lynching the focus of this particular space that we're in now? Yeah, well, I think that's a really important question. I think we have not appreciated the role of racial terror and violence against African Americans in American life. 90% of the black population was in the American South at the end of the Civil War. A 14th Amendment had been passed to create equal protection. A 15th Amendment had been passed to create voting rights. We had the short window where black people were being elected to Congress and thriving. And then violence disrupted all of that.

And lynching was the main source of that violence, this mob reaction to black achievement, to black success. And for me, it's a central topic because we pride ourselves on being a democracy governed by the rule of law. And yet we tolerated rule of law, and yet we tolerated decades of lawlessness. This was all terrorism. And I don't think there has been acknowledgement of it. The communities where this violence persisted have been silent about it. And so lifting this up was really important. At the top of a hill is a pavilion. It houses row upon row of six-foot steel columns that hang from the ceiling. These brown monuments represent something that has the feeling of the human body.

We organize them by county, and then we list the names of all of the documented victims of lynching in that county. And so what you see when you walk in are the names of people and the dates when the lynching events took place. And some, like Burke County, Georgia, you see three names. Pike County, Georgia, three names, Wilcox County, Alabama, four names, and you become acculturated to the variation. You'll see monuments as we walk through where there are 20 names or 30 names. You know, when I first came here, and I just randomly stopped in front of the pillar that was where my grandfather was raised, and I almost like, I mean, I just randomly stopped there, and looked up and it was Danville, Virginia.

And he was the child of a black woman and a white man. And as a teenager, this is the family history, he came home to see this man beating his mother. And as a, obviously a teenage boy is not going to tolerate that. And the story goes that he said to this man, his father, if you touch my mother again, I'll kill you. And the men of the community came to him that night and said, you have to leave.

They're going to kill you. And they gathered whatever resources they had to put him on a train that night to get him out of town. And that's how he ended up in Philadelphia, which is where he spent the rest of his life. And that's the pillar that I happen to stand under. I mean, so many people have that experience, just like you. They come here, they see a county, they think, oh my God, that's where my grandparents are from. And it does bring to mind the weight of this history.

As you walk beneath the pillars, the horror and sweep of lynching becomes more and more clear. Most of the time the people had not done the things they were accused of, but they were also used to block black achievement. People who organized other black people to try to vote. People who just criticized racial inequality. People who tried to organize better labor conditions would often be the targets of this violence and lynching. And then, of course, if someone complained about the lynching violence, they would be targeted, too. They'd be killed, too. While in Montgomery, we met someone who has a personal connection to this terrifying history. I am Josephine Boland McCall. I am the youngest daughter of Elmore Boland, and this is

my home. I'm seeing here pictures of this very distinguished couple, and I take it these are your parents. These are my parents, Bertha and Elmore Boland. This picture was taken circa 1945. My father was actually killed in 1947. She told us that he was a successful businessman in Lowndes County, Alabama, and she suspects he was murdered because of that and the prominent role he played in the community. Do you remember, and you were so little, Do you remember when he was killed? I was at the store, as was my mother and my brother Dee, my brother Morris. And we were there.

We heard the shots. And he was killed less than 150 yards from us at the fork in the road that turned to go to our home. That's horrifying. So one of the men who was riding with him came up and told us that he had been shot. So my mom said, get the gun. He said, no use, he's dead. So my mom got the gun anyway. And we walked from the store down to the scene of the murder. And I actually saw my father lying in the ditch with his eyes open. That's horrible. That is horrible. And despite the pain, Mrs. Bowling-McCaul says,

having her father's story in the memorial feels vindicating. My biggest thing was that I want the world to know that my dad had been lynched just because of his prosperity. He had not done anything wrong. He was not accused of a crime. He had not committed a crime. And all he did was work to help his family. So when Mr. Stevenson came out with the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, I was thrilled because he was another means of my father's story getting to the public. And that story is being shared with hundreds of thousands of people.

The memorial is a huge draw for tourism, one of the top attractions in the entire state, according to the city's mayor. Still, Bryan Stevenson knows this history is not easy. In this corridor, we, in addition to elevating the monuments, we begin to tell some stories because I don't think people know the sometimes arbitrary reasons that could result in someone being lynched. I mean, there are just things that'll break your heart. There was a black man who was lynched in Mississippi, and the accusation was that he thought too much of himself. That was the stated justification for lynching him. And when the family claimed his body, they found the note that he carried in his shirt and his jacket pocket

everywhere he went, which just simply read, Every man a king. And he was a man who believed that every person should have the opportunity to be as respected and noble and decent as a king. We know that this is a kind of a tough experience for people and so when you get down to this quarter at the end of the third quarter, we wanted people to have a chance to just kind of process a little bit. So they have a place to sit down. They have a place to sit down. There is a water wall on the side. And the water wall is dedicated to the thousands of African Americans

who were lynched, who we cannot document, whose names we'll never know. That was civil rights attorney Brian Stevenson giving us a tour of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. That's a project he founded along with the Legacy Museum and the Equal Justice Initiative. Through the Community Remembrance Project, Brian Stevenson works with communities across the country to commemorate victims of lynching through educational programs and historical markers. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Michelle Martin.