REV. JESSE JACKSON: All of us who cannot stand, we can at least bow our heads and pray silently for a moment.
Talk to God in your own way for a moment. Talk to God in your own way.
Talk to God, even now.
This memorial challenges the darkness.
BRYAN STEVENSON: Slavery in America was violent, traumatizing, and tragic.
It lasted for over two centuries, creating a wound that has not healed.
After emancipation, black people were re-enslaved through Jim Crow laws,
disenfranchised and unprotected by the rule of law.
There was great suffering.
But nothing maintained racial inequality more than lynching.
Thousands of black people were drowned, burned, shot and hanged.
Millions fled the American South as refugees.
We've been silent about lynching for too long.
It's time to end the silence, to memorialize those who died, who fled,
who feared the terror our nation tolerated.
Only by acknowledging the truth of our past can we have hope for our future.
That is the purpose of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
This is its faith dedication, the blessing of this space.
[Singing]
FATHER WILLIAMS: We gather this morning to remember. We gather this morning in festive and
solemn joy to remember and to make present those ancestors,
those foremothers and forefathers who made this place, and so many places in our country,
sacred by the sacrifice of their blood. We gather to remember all those whose
names are known, but we also gather to remember those whose names
are known only by their God.
[Sweet Honey in the Rock singing "We'll Never Turn Back"]
RABBI BROUS: But we know the Legacy Museum and this memorial help uncover
the truth and help us remember. We remember that pushing black folks around,
that controlling and containing and hurting and humiliating and terrorizing
and traumatizing was and is deliberate strategy. State strategy. And only when we
acknowledge that truth, when we remember that reality, will we be able to loosen
the chokehold of white supremacy over this nation.
[Continued singing]
REV HOLSTON: Whether it was the Middle Passage, where millions of people were thrown overboard;
was it slavery itself, where, many times, slaves
were beaten in front of families, in front of children, in front of pregnant
women to send a message of fear; or this legacy of Jim Crow
where they use lynching as a tool to control the economics of the community.
And now, we know today that we are talking about mass incarceration and it
is the same racialized terror, it is the same racialized terror. That was an
opportunity where they put fear into the people to ensure control.
This memorial is a place that
memorializes and remembers that terrorism exists here in this country.
[Continued singing]
BRYAN STEVENSON: We believe that in the soil, there is the sweat of those who were enslaved.
In the soil is the blood of those who were lynched. In the soil are the tears of
those who were humiliated during segregation. But in the soil we have
collected, we can plant something. And it can grow. And it can be beautiful, and
it can nurture us, and it can feed us and lead us into a new era.
[Continued singing]
REV HOLSTON: I'm standing here with Bryan today to say that that's our challenge.
And every time you look at one of these people, they're not just crying out to be
remembered for the lynching that took place - they're crying out to say to you,
"You can do better." We can do better. We can create the beloved community. We can
create a place where all of us can thrive. We can create that world if we
stand together, work together, and believe together, and hope together, and
dream together for that very day where all justice rolls down like a body of
rivers and righteousness like a mighty stream.
[Continued singing]