In those days, the point of official remembrance and reconciliation was to heal divisions and head off a very real threat.
Is the point of this in Maryland that, or the exact opposite?
Deliberate stoking of the flames?
Point or not, what will be the effect?
Maryland Has Created A Truth Commission On Lynchings – Can It Deliver?
Aliza Worthington writes at C&L,
Kelebogile Zvobgo, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Between 1850 and 1950, thousands of African American men, women and children were victims of lynchings: public torture and killings carried out by white mobs.
Lynchings were used to terrorize and control black people, notably in the South following the end of slavery.
Yet despite the prevalence and seriousness of the practice, there has been an “astonishing ab.sence of any effort to acknowledge, discuss, or address lynching,” reports the Equal Justice Initiative, the leading organization conducting research on lynchings.
Until now.
In April 2018, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice – the first lynching memorial in the U.S. – was opened in Montgomery, Alabama.
In December of the same year, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill that defined lynching as a federal crime.
More recently, in April 2019, the state of Maryland established a truth commission to investigate the lynchings of at least 40 African Americans between 1854 and 1933.
The legislation that authorized the truth commission, Maryland HB 307, was sponsored by Maryland House Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk.
Speaking before the House Judiciary Committee in February 2019, Peña-Melnyk said that the commission would be an opportunity “to send the message that the lives of the 40-something people really mattered.”
Written with the help of the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project and endorsed by the Equal Justice Initiative, the bill passed with strong bipartisan support just two months later.
The commission has the potential to educate the public about dozens of lynchings – some of which occurred with the knowledge or direct involvement of local, county and state government entities.
The commission can also provide the opportunity for reconciliation between the families of those who were responsible and the families of those who were killed.
Maryland Has Created A Truth Commission On Lynchings – Can It Deliver?
Aliza Worthington writes at C&L,
Kelebogile Zvobgo, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Between 1850 and 1950, thousands of African American men, women and children were victims of lynchings: public torture and killings carried out by white mobs.
Lynchings were used to terrorize and control black people, notably in the South following the end of slavery.
Yet despite the prevalence and seriousness of the practice, there has been an “astonishing ab.sence of any effort to acknowledge, discuss, or address lynching,” reports the Equal Justice Initiative, the leading organization conducting research on lynchings.
Until now.
In April 2018, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice – the first lynching memorial in the U.S. – was opened in Montgomery, Alabama.
In December of the same year, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill that defined lynching as a federal crime.
More recently, in April 2019, the state of Maryland established a truth commission to investigate the lynchings of at least 40 African Americans between 1854 and 1933.
The legislation that authorized the truth commission, Maryland HB 307, was sponsored by Maryland House Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk.
Speaking before the House Judiciary Committee in February 2019, Peña-Melnyk said that the commission would be an opportunity “to send the message that the lives of the 40-something people really mattered.”
Written with the help of the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project and endorsed by the Equal Justice Initiative, the bill passed with strong bipartisan support just two months later.
The commission has the potential to educate the public about dozens of lynchings – some of which occurred with the knowledge or direct involvement of local, county and state government entities.
The commission can also provide the opportunity for reconciliation between the families of those who were responsible and the families of those who were killed.
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