The soil-collection project is part of a plan to erect the first national memorial to lynching victims, to be built on six acres of vacant land in downtown Montgomery. The project will cost twenty million dollars, and will include a museum at E.J.I. headquarters. It will transform the look, and perhaps the reputation, of Montgomery. A key part of the plan is a dare to the communities in which the lynchings took place. ‘We’re going to name thousands of people who were the victims of lynchings,’ Stevenson told the group before they received their trowels and jars. ‘We’re going to create a space where you can walk and spend time and go through that represents these lynchings. But, more than that, we’re going to challenge every county in this country where a lynching took place to come and claim a memorial piece—and to erect it in their county.’

The Legacy of Lynching, on Death Row – The New Yorker. Here in Waco, the lynching of Jesse Washington, the one hundredth anniversary of which came in May of this year, is a permanent and hideous stain on the city’s history. The black community here has never forgotten and will never forget it. I hope and pray the city of Waco does the right thing and claims its own memorial.