African Americans Then and Now
On April 26, 2018, The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama. As you enter the Legacy Museum you face a redbrick wall with words painted in white: “You are standing on a site where enslaved people were warehoused.” Inside you read about lynchings, see exhibits, photos of black slaves, watch videos. You read a quote: Enslavement is “most necessary to the well-being of the negro.” You read about Matthew Williams, who was pulled out of a hospital ward in Salisbury, Maryland on December 4, 1931. A mob yelled “Lynch him!” He was accused of killing a white man. Williams denied it. He was thrown out of the hospital window, stabbed with ice picks, dragged three blocks to the courthouse where he was hanged. They cut off his fingers and toes and tossed them on porches in a black neighborhood and yelled “Make negro sandwiches.” Often a notice would be put in a local newspaper announcing a lynching the day before to round up a white crowd to add excitement. An open room within the museum allows you to go and ponder what you saw. A note on the slave economy and the largest plantations that dominated the South. These include the largest with 1,130 slaves, and the next 24 with several hundred each. After 1830, when the cotton gin came into common use, these plantations became a critical part of a national and international economy, with the United States, England and several other European countries becoming centers of cotton manufacturing, making African slaves a major source of both economic and political capital. A note on the Ku Klux Klan. Three incarnations from 1865 to the present. Purpose: to terrorize blacks, to take a stand against Jews, Catholics, and Southern Europeans. And, what do you know, against LGBT. Costume: a white gown with a pointed hat. Time of activity: nocturnal.