Day 5: Confronting Hatred

One of the major themes of this trip (aka the history of the civil rights movement of the 1950s-1960s) is facing and lamenting the depth of hatred in white American hearts towards black Americans. Today was an especially long day as we visited the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (which tell histories of past and present slavery and lynching), as well as the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (where 4 black girls were killed in a bombing in 1963), and Kelly Ingram Park (where Police Chief Bull Connor released dogs and fire hoses on children peacefully protesting).

Tonight we heard from two women who experienced and navigate lifelong trauma as a result of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. This serves as yet another reminder of just how desperately the U.S. needs to confront our history of racism, domestic terrorism, and violence. Other countries like Germany have lamented and repented of the sins of the Holocaust, but the U.S. has yet to do the same for the sins of slavery, lynching, and white supremacy. The intense hatred which made lynchings possible in this country from the 1870s through the 1950s has not disappeared. We are not that far removed from these racial acts of violence and public spectacle.

Sarah P. Myers

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