‘A moral imperative’

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The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery was created by the Equal Justice Initiative to honor more than 4,400 African-Americans murdered in acts of racial terror, including hangings, between 1877 and 1950. 

Visitors to the memorial, which opened in April 2018, are confronted by about 800 hanging steel slabs. There is one for each county where researchers documented a lynching, and the slabs are engraved with the names of victims.

But that’s not all. Lying on the memorial grounds are 800 duplicate slabs.

The EJI’s goal is to have all of the counties retrieve their slabs and create their own memorials to these victims of racial hatred. A new citizen-led coalition in Birmingham — the Jefferson County Memorial Project — is working to retrieve the county’s slab, which bears the names of 29 victims, and set up a memorial at Linn Park.

The first lynching in Jefferson County occurred in the park in 1883, when it was called Central Park. The victim was Lewis Houston, an inmate at Jefferson County Jail.

This effort to create these memorials is important, according to Abigail Schneider, the JCMP project director. “There’s a moral imperative to honor and pay our respects to these lives that were dehumanized and erased from our historical memory,” she said.

Placing that steel slab in Linn Park will not be just about memory, according to Schneider. “In order to deal with the issue of racial injustice today, we have to have a greater understanding of Jefferson County’s history and the racial violence that was endemic here for more than half a century,” he said.

We must learn the lessons of history, according to co-organizer Joi Brown. “Though it may be difficult history to discuss, I feel it’s important we have these tough conversations now to pave the way for a better future where we do not repeat the mistakes of our past,” she said.

The JCMP was formed in 2018, and the members visited the National Memorial in November, accompanied by Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin.

In December, the JCMP — with nonprofit Create Birmingham serving as co-sponsor — received a $50,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham to retrieve the marker, place other historical markers at lynching sites in Jefferson County and create programming to encourage public discussion about racism in the community, both past and present.

The JCMP is seeking to raise about $400,000 for the project, which will go to site design, construction, installation, education and programming, according to Schneider. The group has discussed locations for the memorial in Linn Park with city officials, according to Schneider.

Linn Park is the perfect spot because it’s “the center of our city government, a place where the first known lynching took place in Jefferson County and a space that community members walk through every day,” said JCMP co-organizer T. Marie King.

Jefferson County residents can learn important lessons from Houston’s murder by a mob of about 150 white men, who dragged him from the jail, according to Schneider.

“There was a conscious effort to bring him to this new park and claim it as a whites-only space,” she said.

In addition, there was advance warning of the lynching but the mayor refused to call out the militia to stop it, according to Schneider.

“To put [the monument] in Linn Park is a way to remind the people of Jefferson County how the government was complicit in allowing these events to occur,” she said.

The JCMP would like to have the memorial installed by this fall, according to Schneider.

“We’re trying to be one of the first counties to retrieve its monument, so we’re moving as fast as we can,” Schneider said.

This spring and summer, the JCMP wants to engender “a thoughtful discussion” about the memorial with Jefferson County residents, in part by hosting events, Schneider said.

In late spring or early summer, the JCMP will unveil its first historical lynching marker at Sloss Furnaces, according to Schneider. Sloss was chosen because the marker refers to the murder of two black men at Brookside Mines in 1997, when those mines were owned by Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company, according to Schneider.

Three people involved with the JCMP, including Brown, are descendants of victims, and the coalition has a call on its website looking for more, Schneider said.

“We want to make sure this project is formed by them as much as possible,” she said.

On Feb. 27, the JCMP released its report on the 30 lynching victims in Jefferson County, with students from six area colleges doing the research.

John McKinzie, one of the two men murdered at Brookside Mines, is the 30th lynching victim identified in Jefferson County and the first found by the JCMP.

The discovery of McKinzie’s slaying “reminds us that there are other undocumented victims of racial terror violence who we may never be able to properly honor and remember,” said Scott Douglas, JCMP co-organizer and executive director of Greater Birmingham Ministries.