Day 6: Montgomery AL to E-Ville
THB top 10 on Racial Violence Book Of the Day: Another Day in America, A Chronicle of 10
Short Lives, Gary Younge
Weather: Very pleasant on the way to Atlanta and perfect in E-ville, cool
and not too much wind
Department of Corrections: The docent leader in Nashville is Brian, not Ryan
Up early, workout in the
fitness center and rather than going to Café Louisa for day-old pastries we
dine for free at the Hampton Inn; cereal, bananas, we share bacon and cream
cheese on a toasted bagel. Hampton Inn was $250/night + $12 valet parking (not quite the $38/night for valet in Cincinnati and Nashville)
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| Our "space" for 12 houts |
Off to Atlanta, easy
sailing to the rental car return ($500 for the week which includes a $200 drop
off fee), a huge back-up at TSA Pre line (enough that they take our entire line
and route us to another fast flowing lane) and we are at the “international”
terminal which is just another stop on the tram with flights arriving or
leaving for overseas destinations. Our Delta flight is a continuation from
Columbia.
Lunch at Ecco of Paninis,
ice tea, potato chips, $47 (they auto-include a tip of 18%). It’s okay, nothing
special except it is nice and quiet and out of the hubbub of the food court. Our
seats on Delta are “comfort” and the two right next to the exit door and right
behind the restroom. We do have a lot of leg room. Downside: the seats are pretty
cold from being near the exit door.
Back in E-ville where the
Uber driver informs us that the Bay Bridge is all backed up (no surprise, the
Bridge is always backed up going to the East Bay) so he takes us over the San
Mateo Bridge; traffic flows the whole way, THB is guessing it isn’t really any
faster and Uber doesn’t care because they charge ahead of time and driver is
free to take whatever route he/she so desires.
Okay, on to the meat of
this post, the observations!
Observations
1.
The South: People seemed very friendly, nobody asked me about THB
about his “Let America Vote” hat, hardly saw anyone smoking, most everybody
called us Sir and Ma’am, the folks we ran into were either white or black (as
best we could tell) and very few Asians, we couldn’t tell if there was anyone
carrying a concealed weapon, we were able to have several frank conversations
about race relations, in Montgomery the staffs and customers of restaurants and
concert goers were definitely integrated.
2.
THB and DB really packed a lot into two weeks. Oh, wait, we were
really only gone 6 days. The 21C visits were intense cram-sessions on
contemporary art. We ate dinner one night starting at 8pm (Day 1), and two
other nights we were out late (for us) at concerts (Days 3 and 4). The only
down time was between symposium sessions and Day 5 when we intentionally kept
time open to save lots of room for visits to the memorial and the museum. We
had 12 hours of driving spread over the 6 days and listened to podcasts (several
Desert Island Disks, Ezra Klein interviewing Cory Booker, several Freakonomics,
maybe a This American Life). How crammed was it? THB didn’t read more than a
page of two of the book started on the plane to Cincinnati, no TV, no
ballgames. Art and Social Justice every day, all day.
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| Kimberly Frost, photographer, Thea Duskin, tattoo artist (one of the THB's faithful followers found the attribution!) |
3.
The National Memorial of Peace and Justice: Okay, THB
gets the Justice part of it, not so sure about the Peace portion. There’s a lot
in the press about the Memorial. For the most part it is pretty typical stuff:
the Memorial is in your face on the total extent of lynching; THB thinks EJI
would say they have barely scraped the surface given the trauma rippling
through 150 years of racial disparity and the outright hatred, intimidation,
the enforcement of economic advantage and the total demeaning by one group of
people with a different skin color than the ones being demeaned. There’s a
whole ‘nother story of wealthy whites manipulating poor whites to do this work
for them, not emphasized at the Memorial or the Legacy Museum.
THB has visited a number of famous memorials (e.g., Maya
Lin’s on the movement for Civil Rights) and has thought about what makes a
memorial more or less successful, more powerful, more like strong art. It’s a
juxtaposition of the concept (as opposed to just putting up a plaque and you
read the story) of how to represent the group being memorialized and the “construction”
as art. So, for example, does the concept of the rusting boxes as representing
lynchings around the country over a long period of time succeed? Does it make
you think about the number of people who were beaten and lynched? Does it honor
them? Did the duplication of the boxes and displaying them as if they were
coffins evoke a sense of “something is yet to come” in terms of coming to grips
with the past?
There’s no doubt about that. The Memorial is
conceptually powerful and extremely well-constructed. THB and DB were primed,
having seen a number of videos families coming to grips with an ancestor (or
more than one!) being lynched and how traumatic and cathartic the concept of
memorializing their dead relatives was for them personally. We didn’t have to
use our imagination to understand the potency of the story finally being told.
And the construction: the
memorial is very large, the uneven levels of the bottom of the boxes in
relationship to the visitors is very unusual and helpful to keeping the visitor
alert to what’s going on, the “yard” of extra boxes gives a much different
view (the context shifts from the standing “bodies” of the dead to a context of
which of the counties have not yet claimed their boxes). Being in the
shade/covered as you tour the hanging boxes is critical given the local
weather. It’s possible the fountain is also a device for cooling visitors.
In this case, after reflection, what was noticeable to
THB was that some elements of the Memorial actually detracted from the concept,
being too obvious or “preachy”…for example, THB would have eliminated the
sculptures on the outskirts of the Memorial of figures at the beginning and
end, got rid of the glass vitrine of dirt collected from lynching sites, and
even considering eliminating the fountain covering one entire wall. On other
hand, THB loved the small signs stating the “reasons” for an individual’s
lynching, right up to the 1940s and exercising their right to vote. Aside: Let
America Vote exists because the white power structure is still trying to “lynch”
blacks in the South who try to get out the vote, except this time the
Republican power structure is doing it “legitimately” through creating voter ID
hurdles and extreme gerrymandering…it sure looks like one’s skin color dictates
who is doing the exclusion and who is the excluded.
Also, the Raise Up piece by Hank Willis Thomas seems
very much to the concept of the dead finally coming back now that they have
been acknowledged. Fits well with the theme of the boxes representing coffins.
It’s noteworthy that there is no mention of the
architects of the Memorial. That’s because it appears EJI did the design pretty
much in-house, using an architecture firm in a supporting role. That’s a major accomplishment for a law firm.
Here's a link to the Equal Justice Initiative site, worth a visit.
4.
The Legacy Museum: the first impression is that there
were lots of people inside. The tickets were timed, and it is easy to spend an
hour or more wandering the various exhibits, so it can get congested
(especially towards the front of the museum). Everything is self-initiated,
there are no “guides” discussing the exhibits. Of course, it is also very
depressing, what was done to blacks to keep them downtrodden, seen as property
rather than as humans with equal rights. And, for THB, on overload after the
memorial, the butt brush factor and density of material dampened the emotional
impact of the museum. It would be better to see the museum when the crowds
are gone (actually, true for just about any museum). And, the museum is
covering a much larger theme than the Memorial, so far more exhibits (in a much
smaller space) makes sense.
5. The EJI meta-message: The impact of
slavery is still being felt today. The Legacy Museum is a testimony to the
continuum of what hatred and greed will do, especially when propagated under
the guise of racism. The symposium sessions were all about the “this happened”
and now we are all paying a price to correct the injustices of the past.
So, here’s the connection to the “Peace”
in the National Memorial of Peace and Justice. You can’t correct the past with
more hatred. You have to find ways to change behaviors that don’t include mass
incarceration (creates more problems down the line), disenfranchisement doesn’t
work, shooting innocent people doesn’t work. Civil rights are for everyone, not
just the lucky ones born with the right skin color of parents who are well off
enough to break the cycle of poverty. How to get there? It better be through
peaceful means or you won’t ever get there.
That’s what THB thinks the EJI
meta-message is: hope and love and determination are needed to correct injustice. Oh, and full participation of all of us in recognizing the problem and contributing to the solution. THB goes "preachy" too.
6. The 21C Museums: So much quality displayed in different style
spaces. THB has already said it: these exhibits are near the top of the
contemporary art world, competing with the top museums in the world (though on
a much smaller scale and what seems a much smaller budget).
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