Page 127 - Middle Georgia State University - Knighted 2019

Walking Among Ghosts: A Narrative Recollection of the Importance and Significance of the
National Memorial for Peace and Justice
Ben Fincher

The bus shuddered up the small Montgomery hill. I, and ten other students, plus two
professors, sat quietly in the rickety vehicle which barely managed to fight off the intense heat of
the southern sun. The bus had carried us through the wide streets of the Alabama capital past
beautiful brick buildings, walls colored bright with murals, and delightful city parks. In a single
breath, the bus passed from this thriving metropolis to what appeared to be the rural hills. The
city faded into a forest, spotted with decaying shacks and rundown homes. Poverty. The bus
passed through this area quickly, bouncing with every pothole and crack, climbing up that small
Montgomery hill. We passed a parole checkpoint. Two men stood in front, smoking casually,
laughing together. The bus made a left turn and crested the peak of the hill and before us was a
monument, breathtaking and new.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice rested on top of that hill, overlooking
Montgomery, casting down on the Capital of Dreams a dark and tragic shadow. The Memorial
houses hundreds of bronze beams engraved with the names of victims of lynchings, as well as
the county and state where the atrocity occurred. The Memorial is a grave site. When we first
entered, a long walkway led us past several signs that established a timeline of the past, from
transatlantic slavery to the lynching frenzy of the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. The
information is relevant and factual but pales in comparison to the effect of the statue of six
chained slaves. They did not appear as statues; no, they looked as though were frozen in time, at
the precise moment a father was torn away from his family at a slave auction. A woman
clutching a wailing child reached out desperately for her stoic husband. A man cried in agony,

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