Qualla: National Memorial for Peace and Justice

National Memorial for Peace and Justice: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Sutton, CC BY 2.0. Eight hundred and five steel rectangles hang suspended from the ceiling, each the size and shape of a coffin. They bear the names of counties across America and the people murdered there by racial terror lynching. As visitors walk through the memorial square, the floor gradually descends while the monuments remain fixed overhead, so the coffin-shaped columns that began at eye level slowly rise above, until visitors crane their necks upward at silhouettes that evoke hanging bodies against the sky. The Washington Post's Philip Kennicott called it "one of the most powerful and effective new memorials created in a generation." Bryan Stevenson, the civil rights lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and built this place, wanted visitors to feel something that words alone cannot convey.

Image: Bill Sutton | CC BY 2.0

National Memorial for Peace and Justice: A Reckoning on Six Acres

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bubba73, CC BY-SA 3.0. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened on April 26, 2018, on a six-acre hilltop in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. The Equal Justice Initiative spent years and an estimated $20 million in privately raised funds to build it. Stevenson drew inspiration from the Memorial t...

Image: Bubba73 | CC BY-SA 3.0

National Memorial for Peace and Justice: The Journey Through Darkness

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Soniakapadia, CC BY-SA 4.0. The memorial unfolds in three acts. Visitors first encounter Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo's sculpture Nkyinkyim -- meaning "twisted," from a proverb that life is a twisted journey. Seven shackled figures of all ages stand interlocked, representing the Middle Passage that str...

Image: Soniakapadia | CC BY-SA 4.0

National Memorial for Peace and Justice: Hands Up, Eyes Closed

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Noahedits, CC BY-SA 4.0. Hank Willis Thomas's sculpture Raise Up confronts the present. Ten Black men stand encased in concrete, some with their heads sunken into it, arms raised, eyes shut. The piece connects the memorial's historical narrative to modern policing. "I see the work that I make as asking q...

Image: Noahedits | CC BY-SA 4.0

National Memorial for Peace and Justice: Monuments Waiting to Go Home

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Buster7, CC BY-SA 4.0. Laid in rows on the ground outside the memorial are 805 duplicate steel columns, one for each county represented inside. These duplicates are temporary. EJI asks each county to claim its monument, bring it home, and install it as a local memorial to the lynching victims from that...

Image: Buster7 | CC BY-SA 4.0