i can count on my toes the number of days that changed my life. my left pinky toe? my sweet sixteen. my first kiss? i can see that one over at my right middle toe. but today was big-toe-level-life-changing, not gonna lie.
today began with seeing the national memorial for peace and justice in montgomery. it documents all the incidents of racially-motivated lynchings of black americans. every county had its own rectangle block with the names and dates of each documented lynching. there were hundreds upon hundreds of rectangles. being in that space, bearing witness to that- i felt. hmm. i felt humbled. i felt glad that i’m white. i felt guilty. i felt really really sad. i’d love a more academic word but... sad. yeah.
warren powell, 14, was lynched in east point, georgia, in 1889 for ‘frightening’ a white girl. a unnamed black man was lynched in 1892 in millersburg, ohio, for ‘standing around’ a white neighborhood. fred alexander, a military veteran, was lynched and burned alive before thousands of spectators in leavenworth, kansas in 1901. will brown was lynched in omaha, nebraska in 1919 by a riotous white mob of 15,000. in 1922, charles atkins, 15, was burned alive by a white mob of approximately 1,000 in washington county, georgia. fred rochelle, 16, was burned alive as a public spectacle in polk county, florida, in 1901. 239 were lynched in phillips county, arkansas, in 1919. frank dodd was lynched in dewitz, arkansas, in 1916, for annoying a white woman.
you get my point. but you don’t. i don’t either. it was entirely pointless. i mean, i know in the minds of those whites supremacists it was everything (hatred has a way of consuming everything it touches) but it just seems. like. they were never allowed to be people. just black.
we all have toes. how hard is that for people to realize? we are more alike than we are different. we all have toes. they all had big-toe-days too. some of those kids- charles atkins, fred rochelle, warren powell- they never got to have those big-toe-days, you know? they died with so many toes left over, so many years unraveling like a spool of yarn down a hill.
next we went to the rosa parks museum. it didn’t impact me emotionally in quite as resonating a way, but i really admire her and how she made it known she was a protestor, not a victim. that’s a distinction i’m not sure i fully understand, in terms of my own actions as someone who advocates for social change.
after, we stopped by the southern poverty law center, which had amazing water installations.
we then went to the legacy museum, which was terrific. i took mass incarceration with max wiggins last year, and god was that relevant. prisons are violent hellscapes, free labor for big corporations. it’s modern slavery, and most people don’t really care. white robes were taken off, and black ones donned instead. a little black boy walked by me while i read, and pointed to a picture of inmates, and said “look daddy! bad guys!” that broke my heart. i was able to see the lynchings by county- in carroll county, townsend cook was lynched june 2nd, 1885. i wonder how close that was to my house, my school. i know a lot of other whites who have generations of family locally. it’s easy to call post-civil-war racial violence a southern problem, but it really was and is not. a man was killed- murdered. murdered. i found an old clipping online, and it reads “Townsend Cook, the negro who assaulted Mrs. Carrie V. Knott, of Carroll County, was taken from the jail at Westminster about 1 o'clock this morning by a body of masked men and hanged.” downtown westminster? i don’t know how many times i’ve gone to lunch with my family or went to the library or went to anti-trump protests on the same block where 130 years ago a man was imprisoned and lynched. nothing made being in the south any more hallowed than being at home.
we then went to selma, and met a man who told us about the violence in selma. it’s a community devastated by poverty. he said that others killed their families, so they killed the families of those others. people kept asking “this is selma?”
then we went to live oak cemetery, a privately owned confederate memorial cemetery. it was really valuable to me to walk there. slavery was pure evil, but walking amongst those gravestones, it didn’t feel different. it felt like those were just people. dead people whose names had been rubbed off headstones by decades of rain and fuzzy moss. they were people. isn’t that terrifying? they weren’t monsters or aberrations, they were just. people.
we then, singing old civil rights freedom songs, crossed the edmund pettus bridge. i felt so giddy. the sun was golden and warm, and all our voices together brought some old dormant spirit inside of myself to life. we shall overcome. you ain’t gonna turn me round. somebody’s hurting my people. our feet pounded across the silver metal, in the shadows of those who came before us. i knew in that moment that i could never replicate that feeling- being 16, walking arm in arm across a twinkling alabama river, flecks of peace and warmth settling on our shoulders and in our hair like snowflakes.
we then formed a circle on the other side of the bridge, and had the most vulnerable and beautiful conversation i’ve ever been a part of. not a single eye was dry. everyone cared so much and had been through so much trauma. the clouds turned pink then gold, and the sun set over the river, and we kept talking in the dark. the frogs began to croak in the swamp below us, and still our voices rushed on like the highway beside us. listening to them be so honest, so real... i cried and cried and cried until my mascara ran in blue and black streaks down my cheeks. i could feel my life being forever altered. my toes curled into the pebbly ground below me, and for the first time in a long while, i knew i belonged somewhere.
and that is the story of my right big toe.
- naomi
today began with seeing the national memorial for peace and justice in montgomery. it documents all the incidents of racially-motivated lynchings of black americans. every county had its own rectangle block with the names and dates of each documented lynching. there were hundreds upon hundreds of rectangles. being in that space, bearing witness to that- i felt. hmm. i felt humbled. i felt glad that i’m white. i felt guilty. i felt really really sad. i’d love a more academic word but... sad. yeah.
warren powell, 14, was lynched in east point, georgia, in 1889 for ‘frightening’ a white girl. a unnamed black man was lynched in 1892 in millersburg, ohio, for ‘standing around’ a white neighborhood. fred alexander, a military veteran, was lynched and burned alive before thousands of spectators in leavenworth, kansas in 1901. will brown was lynched in omaha, nebraska in 1919 by a riotous white mob of 15,000. in 1922, charles atkins, 15, was burned alive by a white mob of approximately 1,000 in washington county, georgia. fred rochelle, 16, was burned alive as a public spectacle in polk county, florida, in 1901. 239 were lynched in phillips county, arkansas, in 1919. frank dodd was lynched in dewitz, arkansas, in 1916, for annoying a white woman.
you get my point. but you don’t. i don’t either. it was entirely pointless. i mean, i know in the minds of those whites supremacists it was everything (hatred has a way of consuming everything it touches) but it just seems. like. they were never allowed to be people. just black.
we all have toes. how hard is that for people to realize? we are more alike than we are different. we all have toes. they all had big-toe-days too. some of those kids- charles atkins, fred rochelle, warren powell- they never got to have those big-toe-days, you know? they died with so many toes left over, so many years unraveling like a spool of yarn down a hill.
next we went to the rosa parks museum. it didn’t impact me emotionally in quite as resonating a way, but i really admire her and how she made it known she was a protestor, not a victim. that’s a distinction i’m not sure i fully understand, in terms of my own actions as someone who advocates for social change.
after, we stopped by the southern poverty law center, which had amazing water installations.
we then went to the legacy museum, which was terrific. i took mass incarceration with max wiggins last year, and god was that relevant. prisons are violent hellscapes, free labor for big corporations. it’s modern slavery, and most people don’t really care. white robes were taken off, and black ones donned instead. a little black boy walked by me while i read, and pointed to a picture of inmates, and said “look daddy! bad guys!” that broke my heart. i was able to see the lynchings by county- in carroll county, townsend cook was lynched june 2nd, 1885. i wonder how close that was to my house, my school. i know a lot of other whites who have generations of family locally. it’s easy to call post-civil-war racial violence a southern problem, but it really was and is not. a man was killed- murdered. murdered. i found an old clipping online, and it reads “Townsend Cook, the negro who assaulted Mrs. Carrie V. Knott, of Carroll County, was taken from the jail at Westminster about 1 o'clock this morning by a body of masked men and hanged.” downtown westminster? i don’t know how many times i’ve gone to lunch with my family or went to the library or went to anti-trump protests on the same block where 130 years ago a man was imprisoned and lynched. nothing made being in the south any more hallowed than being at home.
we then went to selma, and met a man who told us about the violence in selma. it’s a community devastated by poverty. he said that others killed their families, so they killed the families of those others. people kept asking “this is selma?”
then we went to live oak cemetery, a privately owned confederate memorial cemetery. it was really valuable to me to walk there. slavery was pure evil, but walking amongst those gravestones, it didn’t feel different. it felt like those were just people. dead people whose names had been rubbed off headstones by decades of rain and fuzzy moss. they were people. isn’t that terrifying? they weren’t monsters or aberrations, they were just. people.
we then, singing old civil rights freedom songs, crossed the edmund pettus bridge. i felt so giddy. the sun was golden and warm, and all our voices together brought some old dormant spirit inside of myself to life. we shall overcome. you ain’t gonna turn me round. somebody’s hurting my people. our feet pounded across the silver metal, in the shadows of those who came before us. i knew in that moment that i could never replicate that feeling- being 16, walking arm in arm across a twinkling alabama river, flecks of peace and warmth settling on our shoulders and in our hair like snowflakes.
we then formed a circle on the other side of the bridge, and had the most vulnerable and beautiful conversation i’ve ever been a part of. not a single eye was dry. everyone cared so much and had been through so much trauma. the clouds turned pink then gold, and the sun set over the river, and we kept talking in the dark. the frogs began to croak in the swamp below us, and still our voices rushed on like the highway beside us. listening to them be so honest, so real... i cried and cried and cried until my mascara ran in blue and black streaks down my cheeks. i could feel my life being forever altered. my toes curled into the pebbly ground below me, and for the first time in a long while, i knew i belonged somewhere.
and that is the story of my right big toe.
- naomi
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