First-Of-Its-Kind Lynching Memorial Opens In Alabama

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The public is getting its first look at a lynching memorial and museum in Montgomery, Alabama.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, opening Thursday, is dedicated to 4,400 individuals who lost their lives in lynchings and other racial killings between 1877 and 1950. Their names are engraved on 800 steel rectangles, one for each U.S. county where lynchings occurred.

Corten steel monuments with the names and dates of lynching victims are inscribed on them as they hang from the roof structure at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice on April 19, 2018 in Montgomery, Al. More than 800 corten steel monuments are on display representing each county in the United States where a lynching took place. More than four thousand victims are honored at the memorial. (credit: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

A museum is also opening in Montgomery, called The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.

Launch events include a "Peace and Justice Summit" featuring celebrities and activists like Ava DuVernay, Marian Wright Edelman and Gloria Steinem.

The summit, museum and memorial are projects of the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery-based legal advocacy group founded by attorney Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson won a MacArthur "genius" award for his human rights work.

Alabama