The history of America
is in Montgomery, Alabama.
Our nation has been shaped by difficult periods,
where people of color were oppressed, abused, exploited
and enslaved.
In Montgomery, our country's painful past comes into sharp focus.
Thousands of Native people lived in communities across the deep south
for centuries until European settlers arrived. White planters wanted
the rich, fertile lands occupied by the Creek nation in south central Alabama.
In 1814, after employing violence and coercion,
the United States government forced the Creek people to cede 21 million acres of land,
including what would become Montgomery, Alabama.
Tens of thousands of Creek people were forcibly removed from the land,
pushed west on a Trail of Tears, where thousands would die.
White settlers moved in immediately, and a massive effort to traffic
enslaved black people began as part of the domestic slave trade.
Sacred Native burial grounds would be destroyed in Montgomery
to build banks and hotels to support the commerce of slavery.
Montgomery became a city shaped by slavery, as it was financed and supported
by an agrarian economy made profitable by enslaved black labor.
The slave population of Alabama increased from 40,000 in 1820
to 400,000 in 1860.
Before the Civil War, Montgomery had the largest population of enslaved people in the state
and one of the largest in the region, larger than New Orleans and Mobile.
Nearly two-thirds of the people living in Montgomery County were enslaved black people.
There were more slave depots, slave warehouses, and slave commercial sites
than there were churches or schools.
In Montgomery, opposition to the abolition of slavery was so deep and wide
that it was here that the first White House of the Confederacy was formed.
Here, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the leader of the secessionists' interests
to uphold slavery and wage a bloody war against the United States.
This war would ultimately claim the lives of an estimated 750,000 people.
Despite defeat and surrender by the South in the Civil War,
support for slavery and racial hierarchy remained strong in Montgomery.
After the collapse of reconstruction, white Southerners began to erect statues, monuments,
and memorials to romanticize the Confederacy and celebrate Southern resistance
to racial equality and emancipation.
A state constitution was created to sustain white supremacy in Alabama,
and Montgomery proudly proclaimed itself the "Cradle of the Confederacy."
A violent era of racial terror began after Reconstruction
that would result in the tragic lynchings of thousands of black people
in the first half of the 20th century.
Millions of black people would flee the American South
for the North and West as refugees from terror.
It was one of the largest mass migrations in human history.
Black people who remained were subjected to humiliating Jim Crow laws.
African Americans were disenfranchised, denied equal education and employment opportunities,
and routinely humiliated by legally enforced racial segregation.
White mobs in Montgomery lynched twelve African Americans, including
Robert Williams,
Wilbur Smith,
and Otis Parham.
In the 1950s, courageous African American men and women in Montgomery
began a historic movement to fight against racial oppression
that would change the nation. The Civil Rights Movement was born in Montgomery,
when black women refused to cooperate with Jim Crow laws on Montgomery's buses.
A prophetic preacher led mass meetings and a mass movement
that would inspire people all over the world
to come to Montgomery in support of racial equality.
[Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking] "Love your neighbor, as you love yourself.
Seems that I can hear a voice speaking, even this morning, saying to all of us,
'Stand up for what is right.' (Crowd: "That's right.") 'Stand up for what is just.'
'Lo, I will be with you, even unto the end of the world!'"
After sacrifice and struggle, civil rights leaders persuaded Congress
to pass laws eliminating many racial barriers to voting and improving
educational opportunities for black people. Legalized racial barriers to education,
employment, marriage, and opportunity were struck down.
Free of Jim Crow, Montgomery changed, evolved, and grew.
But racial inequality persisted.
Segregation survived, racial disparities continued,
and throughout the country, racial inequality can still be found.
Mass incarceration defines our era, while police violence divides
and burdens our communities. Today, one in three black, male babies
is expected to go to jail or prison in the United States.
A history of white supremacy is still celebrated and honored,
and we remain haunted by our past.
This legacy remains especially evident in Montgomery.
So it is in Montgomery, that we are now insisting that there be truth.
In Montgomery, we want the entire nation to confront our past
more honestly, more courageously, more thoughtfully.
In Montgomery, we are calling for truth and the courage to face our history in a new way.
In Montgomery, we are building a National Memorial for Peace and Justice,
a space to honor thousands of African American victims of racial terror lynching.
In Montgomery, we are opening a Legacy Museum, a space that documents
the need for reflection and justice, from enslavement to mass incarceration.
In Montgomery, we are asking you to join us. Visit us. Stand with us.
Hope with us. Hope for more understanding, more justice,
more fairness, more determination to overcome our history.
Hope for an end to racial bias and inequality. Hope for a better future.
In Montgomery, Alabama, The National Memorial for Peace and Justice,
and The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration,
Opening in April 2018.
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