Justice and Peace

La Voz de Galicia – September 28, 2018 →

Cristina PatoThe American lawyer Bryan Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative to fight against mass incarceration and racial injustice in the United States. In doing so, he became one of the key figures in the creation of one of the most fascinating and necessary museums to foster historical memory: The Legacy Museum: from Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, a part of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The Legacy Museum is located on land that used to be at the heart of the sale and purchase of slaves in Montgomery, Alabama. The space, taking up more than 24,000 square meters, was purchased by Stevenson himself with the idea of making visible a fundamental part of a country’s suffering and granting a space for the remembrance of the more than 4,000 African Americans lynched in the southern states between 1877 and 1950.

The museum opened in April at a moment when the debate about the removal of statues of the most representative figures of the American Confederacy was at the cultural forefront. The museum is really an incredible space where remembrance is granted to the victims of one of society’s most cruel problems: racism and slavery.

The power of art in activism, or of activism in art, is more evident than ever in a place like this: the sculptures of Hank Willis Thomas and Kwame Akoto-Bamfo make one shudder in a manner both profound and inexplicable. It makes one think about our way of remembering the most horrible chapters of our history, where those invisible buried in mass graves continue to be victims, and those in mausoleum continue to be the tormentors. There is so much to do…

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