Since I arrived at dusk last night, I walked around my campground for a bit this morning. With only 20 sites, it took a whopping three minutes to explore to whole park! Coe Landing County Park Campground sits on Lake Talquin and, with more time, would be cool to hike and explore.

However, I had 2pm tickets in Montgomery, AL, for the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.

The Memorial focused on the US’s terror of lynching, honoring the over 6,000 Black Americans murdered from after the Civil War through the 1950s. Metal blocks, one for each county and listing the names and dates of those lynched in that county, hang from the ceiling. To say the memorial is powerful is a complete understatement.

The Museum, which does not allow photography so the guests can pay attention to the exhibits, chronicles how slavery evolved through racial terror lynchings and racial segregation to mass incarceration. I have studied slavery and segregation; nonetheless, I know little about our history of lynching terror and the current state of mass incarceration. The connections among these horrible aspects of our culture opened my eyes to how our past is now our present. Until the museum, I didn’t grasp the relationship between slave and convict labor. Additionally, I find it much clearer to see how voter suppression is yet another means of disenfranchising black and brown Americans.

During my adventure, I’ve seen in museums, at memorials, and through conversations how fragile our country is unless and until we fight to value each other. How we move from where we are to where we need to be…that is the question.