Lynching Memorial Proposed for Hemming Park

[KenFSU]

Full story: http://www.jacksonville.com/news/20180626/lynching-memorial-proposed-for-jacksonvilles-hemming-park

Lynching memorial proposed for Jacksonville's Hemming Park

Almost a year after taking up a debate about removing Confederate monuments from Jacksonville's city property, outgoing City Council President Anna Lopez Brosche has proposed placing a monument to victims of lynching in Hemming Park outside City Hall.

"Ultimately, it is the city's history, and it is the city that has a responsibility to recognize that," Brosche said Tuesday, hours before legislation about the idea was formally introduced to council members. Brosche said the memorial could help spur honest discussions about race and justice and help people learn to deal with differences with respect.

Seven people are known to have been killed in Duval County in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by lynching, a kind of racial violence where groups of whites attacked blacks and other minorities. Some of those killed had been accused of crimes, but they had not been tried or convicted and their killers were normally not later charged.

[Tacachale]

Sounds great, and equally importantly, achievable. Let's make it happen. The Confederate monuments aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

[Charles Hunter]

Good news.  We need to remember the bad history, to, hopefully avoid repeating it.

[Adam White]

Doesn't a memorial for Ax Handle Saturday make more sense (or is there one already there)?

[Tacachale]

Doesn't a memorial for Ax Handle Saturday make more sense (or is there one already there)?

There's a historical marker. There could/should also be a monument. But this lynching monument is already created by the lynching memorial in Alabama, and can be moved once the money comes together.

...

Brosche's bill would create a committee to oversee a process of claiming and moving to Jacksonville a steel column bearing the victims' names currently at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala.

The Alabama memorial, which opened in April, commemorates more than 4,000 black people killed in lynchings nationwide between 1877 and 1950.

Columns reflecting each of about 800 counties where killings occurred are assembled in a permanent memorial, and duplicates of those columns, which carry victims' names and dates of death, were placed elsewhere with the goal of eventually being moved to the counties where the deaths occurred.

...

http://www.jacksonville.com/news/20180626/lynching-memorial-proposed-for-jacksonvilles-hemming-park

[KenFSU]

^I hope it's not an either/or.

With the park's history, an Ax Handle Saturday memorial makes so much sense.

Would love to see something empowering and uplifting, maybe focused more on the sit-ins earlier in the day than on the violence itself.

Love this sit-in monument in Wichita, particularly how you can actually sit down and kind of put yourself at the scene.

[Adam White]

Just to be clear: I think a lynching memorial is a great idea.

And thanks, Tachachale - I didn't know about the marker. A proper memorial makes sense, too, of course.

[Adam White]

^I hope it's not an either/or.

With the park's history, an Ax Handle Saturday memorial makes so much sense.

Would love to see something empowering and uplifting, maybe focused more on the sit-ins earlier in the day than on the violence itself.

Love this sit-in monument in Wichita, particularly how you can actually sit down and kind of put yourself at the scene.

That's amazing.

[Kerry]

^I hope it's not an either/or.

With the park's history, an Ax Handle Saturday memorial makes so much sense.

Would love to see something empowering and uplifting, maybe focused more on the sit-ins earlier in the day than on the violence itself.

Love this sit-in monument in Wichita, particularly how you can actually sit down and kind of put yourself at the scene.

Add it to the cool projects in other cities thread.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch - we have marches to get rid of monuments.

[Tacachale]

^I hope it's not an either/or.

With the park's history, an Ax Handle Saturday memorial makes so much sense.

Would love to see something empowering and uplifting, maybe focused more on the sit-ins earlier in the day than on the violence itself.

Love this sit-in monument in Wichita, particularly how you can actually sit down and kind of put yourself at the scene.

Add it to the cool projects in other cities thread.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch - we have marches to get rid of monuments.

The Confederate monuments? Most Southern cities have those, and some have acted. In Jax, the marches aren't doing anything.

[KenFSU]

Almost a year after taking up a debate about removing Confederate monuments from Jacksonville's city property, outgoing City Council President Anna Lopez Brosche has proposed placing a monument to victims of lynching in Hemming Park outside City Hall.

"Ultimately, it is the city's history, and it is the city that has a responsibility to recognize that," Brosche said Tuesday, hours before legislation about the idea was formally introduced to council members. Brosche said the memorial could help spur honest discussions about race and justice and help people learn to deal with differences with respect.

Seven people are known to have been killed in Duval County in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by lynching, a kind of racial violence where groups of whites attacked blacks and other minorities. Some of those killed had been accused of crimes, but they had not been tried or convicted and their killers were normally not later charged.

Brosche's bill would create a committee to oversee a process of claiming and moving to Jacksonville a steel column bearing the victims' names currently at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala.

The Alabama memorial, which opened in April, commemorates more than 4,000 black people killed in lynchings nationwide between 1877 and 1950.

Columns reflecting each of about 800 counties where killings occurred are assembled in a permanent memorial, and duplicates of those columns, which carry victims' names and dates of death, were placed elsewhere with the goal of eventually being moved to the counties where the deaths occurred.

Brosche wants a 13-person unpaid committee to plan the placement and display of the Duval County column and work with community groups on public education about lynching. The bill calls for the column to be placed in Hemming Park, and says the committee should decide how to establish a historical context and should deal with the parks department and other city agencies about its placement.

The bill would also create a foundation where private donors could give money specifically for moving and displaying the column in Jacksonville.

The column would be claimed and set up once enough money had been raised privately, but taxpayer money would not be used, Brosche said.

Brosche said the bill builds on reaction she received last year after she requested an inventory of Confederate monuments on city property for a discussion of whether to remove them, and to where.

You know what. Re-reading the article above, I'm gonna express what might be an unpopular opinion. If the intent is to balance out the towering, 50' confederate statue in Hemming Park, this feels like a cop-out by the city. It just isn't good enough. A five-foot by two-foot slab of metal, received for free from a collection of 800 others, moved and coordinated by unpaid volunteers, and placed in Hemming Park at zero taxpayer expense. Almost feels like a minimum viable product, meant to check a box without making anyone mad.

Without devaluing how terrible these seven late 1800s/early 1900s lynchings are, if our intent is educating the public and creating a discourse about our city's turbulent history of racial relations, which honestly peaked from 1950 to the early 1990s, I truly believe it misses the mark. I'm happy it's coming home where it belongs, but unless it's part of a bigger collection of monuments, I think it's actually kind of disrespectful to set it in the ground beneath the shadow of the much larger, much grander Confederate Statue.

[thelakelander]

The column:

[Tacachale]

Almost a year after taking up a debate about removing Confederate monuments from Jacksonville's city property, outgoing City Council President Anna Lopez Brosche has proposed placing a monument to victims of lynching in Hemming Park outside City Hall.

"Ultimately, it is the city's history, and it is the city that has a responsibility to recognize that," Brosche said Tuesday, hours before legislation about the idea was formally introduced to council members. Brosche said the memorial could help spur honest discussions about race and justice and help people learn to deal with differences with respect.

Seven people are known to have been killed in Duval County in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by lynching, a kind of racial violence where groups of whites attacked blacks and other minorities. Some of those killed had been accused of crimes, but they had not been tried or convicted and their killers were normally not later charged.

Brosche's bill would create a committee to oversee a process of claiming and moving to Jacksonville a steel column bearing the victims' names currently at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala.

The Alabama memorial, which opened in April, commemorates more than 4,000 black people killed in lynchings nationwide between 1877 and 1950.

Columns reflecting each of about 800 counties where killings occurred are assembled in a permanent memorial, and duplicates of those columns, which carry victims' names and dates of death, were placed elsewhere with the goal of eventually being moved to the counties where the deaths occurred.

Brosche wants a 13-person unpaid committee to plan the placement and display of the Duval County column and work with community groups on public education about lynching. The bill calls for the column to be placed in Hemming Park, and says the committee should decide how to establish a historical context and should deal with the parks department and other city agencies about its placement.

The bill would also create a foundation where private donors could give money specifically for moving and displaying the column in Jacksonville.

The column would be claimed and set up once enough money had been raised privately, but taxpayer money would not be used, Brosche said.

Brosche said the bill builds on reaction she received last year after she requested an inventory of Confederate monuments on city property for a discussion of whether to remove them, and to where.

You know what. Re-reading the article above, I'm gonna express what might be an unpopular opinion. If the intent is to balance out the towering, 50' confederate statue in Hemming Park, this feels like a cop-out by the city. It just isn't good enough. A five-foot by two-foot slab of metal, received for free from a collection of 800 others, moved and coordinated by unpaid volunteers, and placed in Hemming Park at zero taxpayer expense. Almost feels like a minimum viable product, meant to check a box without making anyone mad.

Without devaluing how terrible these seven late 1800s/early 1900s lynchings are, if our intent is educating the public and creating a discourse about our city's turbulent history of racial relations, which honestly peaked from 1950 to the early 1990s, I truly believe it misses the mark. I'm happy it's coming home where it belongs, but unless it's part of a bigger collection of monuments, I think it's actually kind of disrespectful to set it in the ground beneath the shadow of the much larger, much grander Confederate Statue.

I think it's more a case of this is something that's available and doable in the short term, so why not do it? It's not like the Confederate monuments are going anywhere after a year of demonstrations, nor has anyone come up with viable plans for any new monuments.

[CG7]

Hearing about a lynching memorial is one thing. But to actually see a column with seven human beings names on it with Duval County Florida at the top was one of the most poignant things I have ever seen.