New monument turns Rosa Parks’s booking number into warning on US erasure
‘We have come too far to turn around now,’ the monument on Alabama’s Montgomery Square reads
TL;DR
- Montgomery Square, the fourth Legacy Site by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), transforms Rosa Parks's 1956 booking number into a monument against the erasure of history.
- EJI founder Bryan Stevenson aims to ensure Americans fully appreciate the sacrifices and struggles of the Civil Rights era.
- The sites, including the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, preserve the memory of Black resistance and confront ongoing racial injustices.
- Stevenson argues that the US lacks public spaces dedicated to confronting racial terror, unlike Germany's Holocaust memorials or South Africa's apartheid museums.
- The Legacy Sites are privately controlled, allowing for a more direct telling of history, free from political pressure.
- The monument's inscription, 'We have come too far to turn around now,' serves as a declaration of commitment rather than mere commemoration.
- Stevenson compares the governmental approach to Civil Rights history education to the tobacco industry educating people about smoking.
- The Civil Rights movement is presented not as a brief event, but as a costly, collective, and dangerous struggle that continues to demand action.
- The recent Supreme Court decision gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act highlights the need for continued vigilance and action, as the law was won through organizing and pressure, not judicial generosity.
- Stevenson likens the fight for racial justice to a relay race, where each generation must carry the baton forward.