Reflections on a Pilgrimage to Montgomery, Alabama

By Kimberly Harris

“No, thanks. I can’t be sad,” I told my sister last summer when she asked if I wanted to visit Dachau Concentration Camp on our tour of the Bavarian region of Germany and Austria. I had visited the Holocaust Museum in D.C., the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and read and seen countless books and movies on the horrific acts perpetrated by the Nazis prior to and during World War II. As I get older, I tend to avoid sad movies, especially ones that highlight suffering children. The emotions that rise up are too intense, too raw, and hit too close to home. 

Regardless, this past December, I traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, with leaders from the Wake County Community Remembrance Coalition to tour the Museum, Memorial, and Sculpture Park of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). I was warned that, like many tributes to difficult points of history, it would be an emotional trip. Those who warned me were not wrong. But in this case, I dove in. I wanted to feel the breadth and depth of the Black experience in the United States from the first person enslaved to the most recent injustice. And boy, did I. 

The EJI Legacy Museum is situated near the banks of the Alabama River, not far from the infamous river brawl of 2022. (If you’re on TikTok, you know). The immersive experience takes you through the beginning of slavery in America, then to the dark history of lynchings, the Jim Crow days, the Civil Rights movement, redlining, police brutality, and prejudiced incarceration. But if you’re reading this, you very likely know that history already. 

The power of the Legacy Museum, for me, was its ability to draw a straight line, with defined connecting dots, from slavery in America directly to current incarceration rates of people of color. Slavery, and the inherent racism that attempted to justify it, is not just a historical problem. It’s a historical event that gave birth to a racist culture.

The Sculpture Park painted poignant and personal stories of life as an enslaved person starting from childhood. I could imagine how I would have felt having my child torn from me, knowing I may never see him or her again. 

The Memorial to Truth and Justice drove home the countless illegal, and often public, lynchings that occurred largely in the South, but also across the nation. 

There are a lot of feelings for me to process as a white person who loves my country but who wants to reconcile some of its worst injustices. I’m reminded of the lyrics of “We Americans,” a song by North Carolina-based band, The Avett Brothers, which sums up these complicated feelings of patriotism along with acknowledgment of the nation’s institutional flaws. 

“Accountability is hard to impose
On ghosts of ancestors haunting the halls of our conscience
But the path of grace and good will is still here
For those of us who may be considered among the living…
And I may never understand
The good and evil
But I dearly love this land
Because of and in spite
Of we the people.”

We are a good and flawed nation. We can and should become better, but the only path forward is knowledge of our past mistakes, ownership of how those mistakes still affect our citizens, and change to create a better future. We do not need to castigate ourselves when we acknowledge our privilege, but we can and should be called to action. One first amazing and powerful step on that journey would be a visit to the EJI with the Wake County Community Remembrance Coalition on its annual pilgrimage, or a stop this summer on a family vacation. I highly, highly recommend it. 

Kimberly Harris kimberlyann.h.harris@gmail.com