Alabama's new square confronts america's lingering racial scars
A bronze-hand monument in Montgomery, Alabama, now stands as a stark reminder of a history too often relegated to the margins – the arrest of Rosa Parks and the birth of the Montgomery bus boycott.
A reckoning in the civil rights heartland
The square, officially named Montgomery Square, isn’t just a memorial; it’s a deliberate provocation. Etched into the pavement is ‘7053,’ the booking number from Parks’ 1956 mugshot, a symbol meant to expose the reductive impulse to view resistance as mere criminality. But EJI founder Bryan Stevenson has flipped that narrative, transforming a number of confinement into a testament to the enduring struggle for justice.
Stevenson, a legal titan who’s spent decades fighting for the wrongly convicted and condemned, sees this site as a crucial step in confronting America’s reluctance to fully grapple with its past. ‘We haven’t even fully appreciated what happened just 70 years ago during the civil rights era,’ he stated, a chillingly precise assessment delivered just weeks after the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act – a devastating blow to voting rights and a clear signal of a conservative resurgence.
The weight of a relayed legacy
The timing of Montgomery Square’s unveiling is tragically resonant. The court’s decision unleashed a wave of Republican efforts to redraw congressional maps and suppress Black political representation. It’s a direct assault on the gains won through years of sacrifice and struggle. Stevenson argues the square doesn’t merely commemorate; it demands a reckoning. “We have come too far to turn around now,” an inscription proclaims, a defiant assertion etched in bold letters for all to see.
The site’s origins are deeply rooted in the 1965 voting rights marches that passed through this very space. It’s one of four Legacy Sites EJI has meticulously constructed throughout the city, each a powerful testament to the resistance that fueled the movement. The Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice stand as equally vital components of this historical tapestry, chronicling the horrors of the Middle Passage and the legacy of lynching, respectively.
But it’s Montgomery Square that offers a particularly sharp and unsettling perspective. Stories emerge from the visitors, like Josephine Bolling McCall, whose father, an entrepreneur and farmer, was brutally murdered for his prosperity. Her family’s soil, collected from the site of his lynching, remains preserved at the Legacy Museum – a tangible link to a trauma that continues to resonate. ‘We feel immersed and intimately connected,’ McCall shared, highlighting the profound emotional impact of these spaces.
What distinguishes these EJI sites is their control over the narrative. Unlike many federal institutions now battling political interference, Stevenson’s organization maintains autonomy, allowing for a raw and unvarnished presentation of history. ‘It causes people to talk about things,’ Stevenson explained, ‘People start admitting, ‘My grandfather was in the Klan or my uncle was really racist.’ And it just changes the way people begin to appreciate how that history can haunt them if it doesn’t get addressed.’
Stevenson’s concerns are acutely relevant in light of recent events, including the funeral of John Perkins, a civil rights leader, and the proliferation of dangerous conspiracy theories like the ‘great replacement’ narrative. He sees a disturbing tendency to minimize the true extent of racial injustice, reducing it to a ‘paper cut’ rather than acknowledging the ‘severe wound’ that continues to fester. The fight over memory, he argues, is fundamentally a battle over authority – who gets to define the injury and whose story is told.
The recent Florida legislation restricting AP US History textbooks serves as a stark example of this struggle. Stevenson describes it as ‘turning over to the tobacco industry all of the education that everybody will receive about smoking.’ The civil rights movement wasn’t a three-day carnival; it was a sustained, costly, and dangerous struggle, a relay passed from one generation to the next, carrying a clear directive: ‘You have got to continue this race.’
Montgomery Square isn’t just a monument; it’s a call to action, a persistent reminder that the fight for racial justice is far from over. And as Stevenson powerfully concludes, 'At every moment, the baton was passed with a clear directive: ‘You have got to continue this race. We have not won the racial justice we are seeking yet.’’