The EJI project to mark lynchings has put up a lynching monument in front of the old Tuscaloosa jail. This reminds me I need to get back to Karl Llewellyn's work on my new hometown.
Tuscaloosa Lynching Marker
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Reading this sign, and frequent references to "white" and "black" the message is clearly to stir up and incite hatred and resentment in the present day. Do you applaud this?
Would you support a similar sign at the site of yesterday's act of senseless murder, similarly displaying information concerning the race, religion and motivation of the perpetrator, and describing all acts of violence by persons fitting a similar description, committing similar acts for similar reasons? Or, would you label that an unfair slander against an entire people/religion? Would you say that, even if surveys show an great proportion of persons of similar background support such acts, it would be nevertheless unseemly to appeal to group resentment to provoke hatred?
Or, will you contend that lynching was a common feature of Southern life in this country nearly two centuries ago, and institutionalized, supported by the majority of "white people" and thus, somehow different, thereby justifying frequent references to "white people"?
And please recall that we are aware that slavery was abolished after a Civil War, in which hundreds of thousands of "white people" died to end slavery.