UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES/GETTY; COURTESY FOR EJI
Every monument at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice has a duplicate, and the mission of the Equal Justice Initiative is to get all of the 801 counties implicated in racial terror to claim their monument, placing it where a lynching occurred. So far, close to 300 counties have expressed interest in doing so. “It’s been surprising and encouraging,” says Bryan Stevenson, director of EJI. “We’re very energized by that.”
EJI is insisting on a process to make the event as meaningful as possible. “Everybody wanted to just come grab their monument and say, ‘We did that,’” he says. Instead, counties are asked to first erect historical markers for each lynching. “The idea is to build up a consciousness, to truly understand the legacy of lynching before you claim the monument.”