"A voice for the voiceless": Students help Jefferson County Memorial Project honor lynching victims

The United States had a long, sad history of racial terror from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until about 1950. During that time, more than 4,400 African-Americans were lynched, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.

To honor these victims, the EJI opened the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery last year.

At the memorial, there are 800 hanging steel slabs — one for each county where a lynching occurred — and the slabs are engraved with the names of victims. There are also 800 duplicate slabs on the grounds for eventual retrieval by counties.

Beginning in 2018, the Jefferson County Memorial Project — a grassroots community coalition in Birmingham inspired by the National Memorial — has worked to honor the African-Americans who were killed in Jefferson County.

The JCMP, among other goals, seeks to place markers at lynching sites in the county and eventually retrieve the Jefferson County slab from Montgomery.

However, the group also works to educate the public about the county’s history of racial violence and conduct research into the lives of the 30 documented racial terror victims from the area and the circumstances surrounding their deaths.

To carry out this work, the JCMP created a program that attracts students from area colleges with a hunger to work for justice and make the future better than the past.

In September, the JCMP chose its second group of Fellows — 29 students from six colleges in Jefferson County — to take part in the program for 2019-2020, according to Abigail Schneider, JCMP project director.

The new Fellows are a diverse group but all of them “have a clear drive to work towards alleviating the racial injustices that impact our society,” said T. Marie King of the JCMP.

“I took on the challenge with the hope of being a voice for the voiceless,” said Brandon Hooks, a Miles College student.

“I applied to JCMP because I’m very passionate about social justice, especially how young people engage with one another to understand historical events that still affect systems that are in place today,” said new Fellow Joyeuse Senga, a Bridge2Rwanda Scholar at Samford University.

In September, the JCMP held a kick-off dinner for the Fellows at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at UAB.

In October, the students went to the Birmingham Public Library to learn to use microfilm and conduct primary research.

And in January, the JCMP will share the research findings of the new Fellows with the public.

The first group of JCMP Fellows in 2018- 2019 made an important discovery. They found information regarding Jake McKenzie, the 30th documented Jefferson County lynching victim. The county’s slab at the National Memorial in Montgomery originally listed 29 victims. The JCMP released its report in February.

In September, the JCMP dedicated a historical marker at Sloss Furnaces to memorialize McKenzie, along with Tom Redmond. Both men were lynched while working at mines owned by the Sloss-Sheffield Iron and Steel Company.

The JCMP learned more about research methods. “We realized that local newspaper sources, which only exist on microfilm and have not been digitized, have yet to be looked at for information on acts of racial terror,” Schneider said.

In 2019, each Fellow has been assigned a Jefferson County newspaper that was in print during the correct time period, according to Schneider. “We hope these sources will bring light to other lynchings that occurred or give us more information on ones that we already know of,” she said.

The work of the JCMP allows people in the community to learn the lessons of the past, according to Hooks.

“Events that have occurred in the past have continuously affected how we approach the actions we take in the present, whether we know it or not,” he said.

“It is important to remind the community of a significant part of history that many people do not acknowledge or know about,” Senga said.

The JCMP’s work brings awareness of the “atrocities that were experienced by very real individuals who suffered,” said Fellow Jennifer White, a Lawson State student. “These people deserve to be acknowledged and talked about.”

In 2020, the JCMP plans to dedicate more historical markers at lynching sites in Jefferson County and is working with the city of Birmingham to identify some locations.

The JCMP also hopes at some point to retrieve the county’s duplicate slab or pillar from the National Memorial and create a memorial here, with Linn Park — the site of the county’s first known lynching in 1883 — being the most likely site.

However, King said the JCMP has no target date for that installation.

In addition, the organization is “still soliciting feedback” from the community regarding the best location for the pillar. King said.