"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."
–Ida B. Wells
As I have absorbed the horrors of the latest lynching of a black person by allegedly frightened white people, I have tried to give words to a thought that has been percolating for me for some time – which is, as black people arrived on these shores in chains, and have been brutalized, oppressed and subjugated ever since, and are a minority in America – what is the basis of this white irrational fear of the black body?
As I will be vacating the Board of Lynching Sites Project of Memphis July 1, this is my valedictory statement about work with this very significant organization in our community.
LYNCHING SITES PROJECT MEMPHIS: A GOOD AND HOLY WORK
by Fred Morton
April 26, 2020
Black History 105 Years Later: Do we still need Black History Month?
By John Ashworth, Executive Director, LSP
The ritual of soil collection is an integral part of our work of remembering and lamenting the great horrors of racial violence committed throughout our land and in this very county.
Lives were viciously taken without due process or legal consideration of any kind. It was a form of racial violence calculated to discount and trivialize persons of color even to the extent of desecrating the remains of the victims and denying to kin and friend the decency of burial and sacred remembrance. These victims' lives were snatched from public memory as if they never lived.
On Saturday, October 19, 2019, the Lynching Sites Project of Memphis dedicated two markers to African American victims lynched in Shelby County, Tennessee. One was killed in 1851 and the other in 1869. I have long contended that there is a straight line between the events of yesteryear and the way African Americans are treated and perceived by very powerful and influential voices today.
The name of the 1851 victim is unknown, but for purposes of this article, I refer to him as George. The 1869 victim was Wash Henley.
GETTING COMFORTABLE WITH BEING UNCOMFORTABLE
A Sermon on Luke 6:27-36
Sometimes, you just have to tear up your sermon and start all over again. That's what Traci Blackmon, a black United Church of Christ pastor said to Mike Kinman, a white Episcopal priest, the day after Michael Brown was shot and died in Ferguson, Missouri - August 9, 2014.
An oft-asked question during February, what is the purpose of a Black History Month?
Since early 2016 I have attempted to encourage a spirit of leadership in the Lynching Sites Project modeled after high-flying geese, but I have never taken the time to spell that out fully. I want to do that here with some examples from the LSP story.
There are 6 character traits of high-flying geese which offer profound teaching about leadership, communion with one another, and flying well as an organization:
1. Keeping Company with the Fallen