Here's an interesting Video where Ben points out the Deception from various Organizations, like the Southern Poverty Law Center.

[www.youtube.com]
Student Implies Ben Shapiro Is White Privileged, Gets A Proper Reply From Ben
29:33 Minute Video

Conservative Network
Published on Dec 6, 2017
Student confronts Ben Shapiro on white privileges, Gets STOMPED. Plus additional clips of Ben Shapiro educating the students on the real meaning of white privileges and why it shouldn't exist.

[youtu.be]
8:26 MM
JR’s Notes:
OK, so first of all, let’s start with the notion of White Privilege, which has become this buzzword that you hear all the time now.

White Privilege is Responsible for Everything up to and including the Kardashians - is Responsible for Everything - White Privilege.

White Privilege is a way to Silence anybody who is Not of Color - that’s what White Privilege is. It is just a Leftist Bull Sh-it Term that means Shut Up because you are Not a Member of a Minority Group - a Privileged Minority Group in the Leftist Space. It’s Reverse Racism in the Highest Order. You’re basically saying to White people who aren’t Racist and you can’t find any Proof of their Racism that they must be Racist because they’re White - that is called Racism. If you are accusing somebody of something simply because of the Color of their Skin without any Evidence, that’s called Racism, gang.

But you don’t have to trust me. Let’s go through what other people say the definition of White Privilege is, you know, folks on the Left, what do they say that White Privilege is?

Well, here’s the definition of White Privilege from the Southern Poverty Law Center. … For people who don’t know the SPLC is an extremely Far-Left Organization that pushes the notion that basically, anybody is Conservative and on the Right Side of the Aisle must be a Member of a Hate Group.

So here is their definition of White Privilege, “White Skin Privilege is not something that White people necessarily do, create or enjoy on purpose. Unlike the more overt individual and institutional manifestations of Racism, White Skin Privilege is a transparent preference for Whiteness that Saturates our Society. White Skin Privilege served several functions. First, it provides White people with perks that we do not earn and that people of Color do not enjoy. Second, it creates real advantages for us - White people are immune to a lot of Challenges. And finally, White Privilege shapes the world in which we live, the way we navigate and interact with one another and with the world.” 10:24 MM

...
[youtu.be]

This is NOT a political issue, white people inherently know they are UNHEALTHY...

Ehret:
"The skin pores of the WHITE man are constipated by WHITE, dry mucus; his entire tissue system is filled up and filled out with it. No wonder that he looks WHITE and pale and anaemic. Everybody knows that an extreme case of paleness is a "bad sign."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/2018 07:05PM by NuNativs.

It’s NOT a Political Issue in an Ideal World, but Psychopaths Rule the World and their MO is Divide & Conquer, so it’s a HUGE Issue Politically for the Powers that Be!

As far as ALL of us being SICK, here is an article I read followed my JR Comment back in 2003 when I first started studying about the 5 Percenters.

[www.answering-islam.org]
FIVE PERCENTERS

The term "Five Percent" originated in the 1930's with Elijah Muhammad and Fard Muhammad. These men produced a series of "lessons" which consisted of 122 questions and answers which were asked by Elijah Muhammad and answered by Fard Muhammad. One of the questions was: "Who are the 5%?" The answer was that the "5%" were a group of people who knew and understood the "true" knowledge of God and were also called the "Poor Righteous Teachers."

In the 1960's, Clarence Smith (a former member of the Nation of Islam) left the Harlems' Mosque #7 in New York and took the "lessons" with him. Smith taught his followers that they were God - "Five Percenters" and "Poor Righteous Teachers". Smith believed and taught that 85 percent of the population are deceived, 10 percent are the oppressors [or devils] who know the truth but refuse to accept it. The remaining 5% are those who know the truth, and their mission is to teach and guide the ignorant 85%. The group became known as the "Five Percent Nation of Islam" and they currently call themselves "The Nation of Gods and Earths." The Five Percenters believe the black man (the original man) is god, and that black women are "earths". They also believe that white men (or iceman) are devils.

JR Insert: Man is naturally a tropical creature that should be living around the equator and the further we go from the equator, the further we go from our natural environment, the further we go from our natural diet, the whiter, sicker and meaner we become. We got less sunshine, had to wear clothes and had to eat things that we were not and are still not biologically adapted to eat. All of the scientific documentation from current epidemiology studies show that autoimmune diseases increase the further we go from the equator and that we also eat more animal products and get less sunshine.

...
[www.answering-islam.org]

Quote
NuNativs

This is NOT a political issue

Yes, but the Libs have made it a political issue - like they've made race, gender, sex, wealth, education, religion, healthcare, economics, speech, pregnancy, sports, tradition, marriage, entertainment, nationalism, self-defense, everything they've made a political issue to smear the 'other side' and turn our world atheist/Communist.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/2018 10:23PM by Jennifer.

Ridiculous lib concepts - trigger warnings, microaggressions, unconscious bias, diversity...

All the lib buzz words in that first video.

I love Ben Shapiro; that speech was great. Thanks, John!

"Statistical disparity does not mean discrimination."

"Capitalism is color-blind."

Refreshing to hear someone tell 'the truth' about Ferguson/Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin -

[youtu.be]

Indoctrinated College students - and their professors - are scary. What they're doing to society/the culture.

"Lib" is a label you use to DIVIDE yourself from another. The TRUTH is, WE are ALL Sun/Light, Air, Water & Earth in animation. Labeling others is pre-school thinking and it's how the powers that be distract you from OUR POWER if WE were UNITED!

"Turn a people against themselves, and they're easy to CONTAIN" Caesar
Thank you for your contribution Jen!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2018 01:53AM by NuNativs.

I'm not uniting with people who call me racist because I'm Republican/southern, people who hate me because I'm white, people who hate me because of my money and want to take it from me by force to give to someone else, people who don't like me because I'm Christian, people who think it's fine to kill their own unborn babies, people who want to control my every thought and speech, people who want to destroy historic statues and change the names of buildings, schools, parks, etc., because it reflects their own racist history, people who change history books to reflect the lib view, people who teach first graders all about sex and masturbation and gayness, gay/transgender bullies, people who push their children to get sex change operations and take injections and ruin their lives, people who have indiscriminate sex with anybody and everybody/if it feels good do it, people who want to take my means of self-defense away from me, people who want to raise taxes galore and 'tax the rich' to death, statists who want to grow government and increase government spending through the roof, and want to live in a total welfare state, people who want to let anyone and everyone into our country when our country cannot sustain such people and they are dangerous, people who want to live in a socialist/communist country, people who hate men, people who gossip and tear down each other, worship celebrities, bow down to status, cult of personality, are followers and collectivists. I'll not be uniting with the likes of those lib women.

Indoctrinated College students - and their professors - are scary. What they're doing to society/the culture.

Jennifer, Your quote remind me of Pol Pot you have have a lot in common.

Jennifer, you really should quit while you're ahead, if you ever were. Makes sense you identify as a "christian"...

Quote
NuNativs

Makes sense you identify as a "christian"...

I'm Christian because of my Christian upbringing and baptism. I also consider myself 'spiritual' because I believe in a spiritual world, a 'higher power', angels, life after death, that our spirit/soul doesn't die, etc. - the paranormal, multiple dimensions/plains, the supernatural, etc.- and I'm open to other religions, especially Buddhism, follow self-realized/enlightened people, etc. Open-minded.

You seem to have a derogatory view of "christians". Are you an atheist or just don't like Christians?

a 'higher power'

Did you mean rifle?


Everything is based on our own uptightness. We could blame the government;
We could blame the food; We could blame the highways; We could blame our own motor cars; our own cloths; We could blame the infinite variety of things.
But it is we who are not letting go, not developing enough warmth and sympathy-which makes us problematic. So we cannot blame anybody.

Chogyam Trungpa

Quote
riverhousebill

a 'higher power'

Did you mean rifle?

Lol - yeah, I worship my rifle. Take it to bed with me. Kiss it good-night.

Quote
Jennifer

Quote
NuNativs

Makes sense you identify as a "christian"...

I'm Christian because of my Christian upbringing and baptism. I also consider myself 'spiritual' because I believe in a spiritual world, a 'higher power', angels, life after death, that our spirit/soul doesn't die, etc. - the paranormal, multiple dimensions/plains, the supernatural, etc.- and I'm open to other religions, especially Buddhism, follow self-realized/enlightened people, etc. Open-minded.

You seem to have a derogatory view of "christians". Are you an atheist or just don't like Christians?

I don't like anything that takes OUR attention away from the MIRACLE of LIFE WE have here & now. That includes ALL religions, the so-called afterlife and other unproveable, completely arguable phenomenon and concepts.

Global Paradise is simply letting go of all that and leaning COLLECTIVELY into the Sun/Light literally, that which WE KNOW IS....

They're teaching/propagandizing 'white privilege' and 'racism' in elementary schools now. Probably have been for a while but we didn't know about it. It's part of the curriculum - Diversity/racism, etc. The libs are disgusting - promoting racism/white privilege starting with 8-year olds to divide everyone and keep the minorities on the Dem plantation.

Oh, and who is racist - why, its the Southerners/Christians/Republicans of course. Certainly not the superior elite white libs.

Raleigh parent upset about 'white privilege' paper sent home with student

[abc11.com]

Pabon said she believes the content is also not proper for such a young child.

"He's 8 years old. What does he need to know about racism or white privilege?" Pabon asked.

The sheet is titled "Step 3: (Begin to) Understand the Concept of White Privilege." Pabon said she did not receive any previous steps or forms about the topic.

[drive.google.com]

In a brief note at the top of the sheet, it notes that this is part of an initiative led by the school's PTA Advocacy Team.

It states that the initiative is "focusing on generating awareness and empathy to create a safe and equitable Hunter Community."

Should a school PTA talk about white privilege? A minority parent in NC objects.

[www.newsobserver.com]

"Conservatives around the country are attacking the Wake County school system, a Raleigh elementary school and the school's PTA over a handout about white privilege that was sent home with students.

There's been national attention since a minority parent at Hunter Elementary School complained this week that her 8-year-old son brought home a handout on understanding the concept of white privilege — the idea that white people get certain benefits due to their skin color.

The handout on understanding white privilege includes statistics such as how most leaders in federal government and teaching are white, and it lists examples of white privilege. The handout includes a link to a video that talks about how black people are treated differently than white people when it comes to getting a job, buying a home and being pulled over and arrested by police.

But the issue of white privilege is something that Wake teachers and principals are studying as part of the district's diversity training."

***********

Oh, they're teaching 'white privilege' in churches also -

Look at these sanctimonious libs patting themselves on the back -

[www.thenewstribune.com]

Quote John Rose-Here's an interesting Video where Ben points out the Deception from various Organizations, like the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This guy Rose talks of deception by the Southern Poverty Law Center, But has no problem quoting David Duke Imperial Grand Wizard of the KU KLUX KLAN.

John is not using deception when he quote's the Dr. David Duke, He just forgot to mention besides being the good Doctor David Duke's title Imperial Grand Wizard of Ku Klux Klan.

ps. John you still advising Trump?

The damage done by Lib Women to 'white people' and men working through the colleges is amazing -

And yet all everyone ever does is empower them ...

‘Dismantle whiteness’ mural installed at USC

[www.thecollegefix.com]

"An artistic mural has been installed at the University of Southern California that declares “dismantle whiteness” in big, black and white capital letters, one part of a larger display designed to spark conversations regarding “racism, sexism and xenophobia,” according to its creators.

The mural was designed by the feminist artist collective When Women Disrupt in conjunction with students in the class “Women: Designing Media for Social Change.”

Recently installed at an entrance to the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism building, it depicts large sketch drawings of four women of color on walls flanking the doorway with the words “DISMANTLE WHITENESS AND MISOGYNY ON THIS CAMPUS” posted on the ceiling above it."

************

This thread Started by Klucker Rose-White Privilege debunked
is pure horseshit.



Social Justice

Lol Klans
A scholar of the Ku Kux Klan explains how the KKK used the same trolling tactics as the alt-right.








Alt-right demonstrator 'Based Spartan' at a rally on June 4th, 2017, in Portland, Oregon.**
(Photo: Natalie Behring/Getty Images)
It has been over one year since Donald Trump was elected, and the so-called alt-right is still with us. Their "God Emperor" having been elected president, these 21st-century American Nazis aren't looking to crawl back under their futons. Instead, they are expanding: propagandizing, holding recruitment rallies, and starting violence around the country. And yet, with their troll ethics, gladiator costumes, and frog-god iconography, it can be very hard to take them seriously as a threat to public safety or national democracy. The alt-right is a bunch of clowns—how dangerous could they be?
To get a sense of the historical context behind today's alt-right, I spoke with Elaine Parsons, a professor of history at Duquesne University and author of Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan in Reconstruction. The book is an excellent history of the 19th-century Klan and the rise and fall of its wave of terror between 1867 and 1872, and in the year since its release, Parsons' book has acquired new significance as white-identity politics have declared themselves openly. Most of our ideas about the Klan come from the 20th-century version, and especially from the civil rights movement, but the original group is probably more relevant to our present moment. The parallels between the Reconstruction Klan and the milk-chugging Proud Boys are not a stretch—they're undeniable.

The goofiness and so-called irony with which the alt-right goes about fascism can seem distinctly postmodern and Internet-forged, but a similar humor animated the Reconstruction Klan. All the Klannish affectations and accoutrements that seem so ridiculous today—the alliterative k's, the costumes, the Magic: The Gathering titles like "Grand Wizard" and "Exalted Cyclops"—were ridiculous, and self-consciously so. One of the functions of humor for the Klan, Parsons says, was to mark their transgressions as acceptable. "The right believes in the truth of racial and gender inequality and the legitimacy of domination as the engine of change," she says, "but in America after the Civil War, stating that openly becomes more taboo. So they used humor to shake loose people's refusal to talk about inequality, playfully illustrating what they thought should be reality. They creatively destabilized norms to shake people loose of comfortable pieties." Like the Klan, the Proud Boys actually do think that patriotic militias of white men should be the foundation of American political society, and as long as they perform it as a circus show, they can avoid some of the consequences for acting out that fantasy.

The architects of the Reconstruction Klan weren’t revanchist Southern gentlemen; they were memelords.
Wearing wacky costumes is associated more with the far left (think climate activists dressed as polar bears) than with the far right, yet during the latest fascist/anti-fascist confrontations, it has been the latter working harder on their outfits. They've stirred together an aesthetic mélange of sports equipment, American flags, Internet memes, Greco-Roman battle wear, Nazi iconography, and fetish gear. It looks laughable and absurd, but they're humoring themselves first and foremost. The Reconstruction Klan learned their costume tradition from actual costume parties of the sort that rich Southerners used to throw, and they attempted a more unruly set of ensembles than even today's alt-right: not just the infamous white-hooded ghosts, but moon men and demons and cross-dressers. "The Klan served an energizing function in part by building a new Southern white male identity that was drawn self-consciously from the newest trends, from popular entertainment to contemporary forms of organizational structure" Parsons writes in the book. The architects of the Reconstruction Klan weren't revanchist Southern gentlemen; they were memelords.
Based on her research, Parsons has come to think that costumes also fulfill another function for the far right. "Costumes tell the viewer that the thing the wearer is trying to do is cultural, that it's not a political or violent attack," she says. "They suggest that the wearer is trying to convince, or engage. If you're wearing a costume, you're thinking about the viewer, you're imagining yourself in conversation with someone else. But what people fail to understand is that cultural control is a question of power." The playful outfits give the rest of us a false sense of security by tricking us into thinking the performers are acting within the liberal symbolic order. They indicate an expressive speech-act is occurring. "Costumes tell us that they're performing, that they can come back from what they're doing," Parsons says. "But why should that be reassuring? Military uniforms are costumes in the same way." Just because it's a performance doesn't mean it's not real.
When media outlets first started talking about Richard Spencer, the white supremacist who coined the term "alt-right," the profiles framed him as the "dapper fascist": a stock character in American entertainment (from Law and Order to Sons of Anarchy) who preaches faith and family while wearing a suit and pocket square, yet holds atrocious views. But as Spencer's character came into focus (jobless heir to a plantation, failed academic aesthete, more interested in young men and frog memes than in his wife and child), he started to look more like one of the bored musicians who formed the original Klan than a 20th-century chairman of the local White Citizens Council. During Reconstruction, Parsons says, white Southern men (reasonably) believed that their time for prosperity had passed, that their leadership roles in the family and community were being usurped. "They thought there was nothing for them to do," Parsons says. "These groups emerge when white men feel they can no longer exercise legitimate democratic authority, and some of them turn to violence." Purposeless losers are extremely easy to mock, and that can sometimes obscure just how dangerous they are.

A right-wing demonstrator participates in the Denver March Against Sharia Law in Denver, Coloradom on June 10th, 2017. The march was supported by two right-wing groups, The Proud Boys, and Bikers Against Radical Islam.
(Photo: Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images)
Think of Jeremy Christian: Most of the pictures we have of the man who stabbed two men to death on a Portland train are from one of these Nazi costume parties that their attendees call "free speech rallies." The images are of Christian standing alone, wearing an American flag around his neck, throwing up a heil with his right hand. Only anti-fascists have seized on video from the event, where you can see Jacob Von Ott, organizer and spokesman of Identity Europa (a pseudo-intellectual white supremacist group that targets college campuses), go up and shake his hand, which Christian lowers from his Nazi salute. There is no bright line distinguishing the current state of affairs from one in which white-power militias stalk the country intimidating, harassing, and even killing their enemies. Don't let the silly costumes fool you; we are already there.*

Fortunately, there are some encouraging lessons from the 19th century. Though the federal government betrayed Reconstruction, the Klan's reign was short-lived. "I don't want to sound like I'm suggesting anything," Parsons says, "but speaking as a historian, violent resistance was very effective. We've told ourselves a story about the Klan facing cowering victims, but people organized, fought, and defeated the Klan constantly." Black Americans in the Reconstruction South were often armed, not just as individuals but as communities, for collective self-defense. "There were places the Klan couldn't go," Parsons says, "people who, according to their code, they should have attacked, who they didn't."
Fighting back also dispelled the air of comedy. In 1868, when costumed night-riders showed up at Bob Anderson's home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he came out shooting. The local liberal paper celebrated Anderson, writing, "We wonder now if the Conservative papers will deny that the Kuklux sneak about the country in the unhallowed business of stealing from the freedmen. A Kluklux has been killed, laid low by the bullet of a brave colored man who had courage to defend his home from the assaults of reckless villains." If history is to be our guide, ignoring or laughing at the alt-right isn't going to be good enough. We have to take these jokers seriously.

Klansmen Rose, Since you like to quote David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan and are so hung up on hanging people a little history for you.

Your need and desire to hang people?


There is a reckoning taking place in America over how we remember our history.

Inside the memorial to victims of lynching
Oprah Winfrey reports on the Alabama memorial dedicated to thousands of African-American men, women and children lynched over a 70-year period following the Civil War
2018
Apr 08
By
Oprah Winfrey


There is a reckoning taking place in America over how we remember our history. Much of the focus has been on whether or not to take down monuments that celebrate the Confederacy. But this story is about a new monument going up in Montgomery, Alabama. It documents the lynchings of thousands of African-American men, women and children during a 70 year period following the Civil War.
The project is being led by criminal defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, who is determined to shed light on a dark period in our past that most people would rather forget. It's a shocking and disturbing reality that lynchings were not isolated murders committed only by men in white hoods in the middle of the night. Often, they were public crimes, witnessed -- even celebrated -- by thousands of people. Stevenson believes if we want to heal racial divisions we must educate Americans -- of every color and creed.

Markers at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice representing 805 counties where lynchings took place CBS News
These cotton fields in southern Alabama are quiet now, but in 1937 a brutal murder took place here: the lynching of Wes Johnson.
Last January some of Johnson's descendants came here in what has become a ritual taking place at lynching sites across the country, organized by civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson.
Bryan Stevenson: Something happened here that was wrong. Something happened here that was unjust. And too few people have talked about it. And so we want to acknowledge the wrong that happened to Wes Johnson.
This is 18-year-old Wes Johnson. It is the only known image of him that remains. He was a tenant farmer accused of assaulting a white woman. Before he could stand trial, a mob of one hundred men dragged him from jail, shot him and left him hanging from a tree.
Bryan Stevenson: The blood of Wes Johnson is in this soil. I'd like you to begin to dig this soil in remembrance of Wes Johnson.
The soil collection is part of Bryan Stevenson's project to document and remember African-Americans lynched during a period of what he calls "racial terror."
Bryan Stevenson: We want to call this community to repentance, to acknowledgement, to shame. We want to tell the truth, because we believe in truth and reconciliation but we know that truth and reconciliation are sequential. We can't get to where we're trying to go if we don't tell the truth first.
So far, Stevenson's team has chronicled more than 4,300 lynchings. They continue to find more.
Many victims, like Bennie Simmons and John Richards were accused of murder. One in four lynching victims, like Joseph Richardson and Frank Embree -- were accused of unlawful conduct with white women.
In nearly every case, no evidence, just an accusation, was enough.
Oprah Winfrey: There are so many crimes committed against African Americans. Why focus on lynching?
Bryan Stevenson: At the end of the Civil War black people are supposed to get the right to vote. And the only way people who were white could maintain their political control was to intimidate black people. And lynching was especially effective because it would allow the whole community to know that we did this to this person. It was intended to send a message that if you try to vote, if you try to advocate for your rights, if you insist on fair wages, if you do anything that complicates white supremacy and white dominance and political power, we will kill you.

Contributor Oprah Winfrey with Bryan Stevenson CBS News
Oprah Winfrey: Anything that upsets the power structure as I want it to be.
Bryan Stevenson: That's exactly right.
In 1993 Bryan Stevenson founded an organization he called "the equal justice initiative." It's a legal advocacy group, based in Montgomery, Alabama, focused on defending the poor and powerless. Stevenson is best known for his legal victories in the United States Supreme Court and for successfully overturning the wrongful convictions of over 100 people on death row.
But ten years ago he turned the attention of his organization to also investigating crimes of the past: the lynchings of African-Americans. Defense attorney Sia Sanneh has spent hundreds of hours searching through newspaper archives and visiting county courthouses.
Oprah Winfrey: Is there usually newspaper evidence or documentation?
Sia Sanneh: Often there were public reports, because people acted with impunity. And so there would be newspaper reports, sometimes in advance, saying, "A man will be lynched later this afternoon."
Sia Sanneh: This is an article about the lynching of a man named Jesse Washington, who was accused of a crime in Waco, Texas.
The newspaper headline read: "Burn young negro in public square as 15,000 look on."
A mob dragged Jesse Washington, a teenager who was convicted of murder after a one-hour trial, from the courtroom to the public square.
Sia Sanneh: There's a remarkable photograph of the crowd. And it's people dressed in their Sunday best--
Oprah Winfrey: Sunday best.
Sia Sanneh: --with their hats on.
Oprah Winfrey: (READING) "His clothing oil-soaked. He is strung to tree. Fire is set under him. And he is dropped into flames as 15,000 people look on."
Sia Sanneh: I think it's incredibly revealing that death was not enough. That it wasn't enough to kill people. People would be killed, and then shot. And then set on fire. And then even, after that, there are cases where the body was dragged to the heart of the black community.

Sia Sanneh CBS News
Fear of that kind of mob led Wes Johnsons' relatives to bury him in this unmarked grave.
Walker Howell: Right here is where Wes Johnson is buried. And--
Oprah Winfrey: Right here?
Walker Howell: Right here.
Faye Walker Howell, who is a filmmaker and Wes Johnson's distant cousin, spent decades interviewing relatives who were alive at the time and remembered the lynching.
Walker Howell: They had to bury him in a hurry.
Oprah Winfrey: Uh-huh. Why?
Walker Howell: Because the lynch mob, they were coming they wanted Wes' body to take around town, to drag around town, to show the body off.
Bryan Stevenson: It wasn't just Wes Johnson who was killed and victimized. It was the entire black community.
Walker Howell: Exactly.
Bryan Stevenson: Everybody was feeling fear and panic and menace and trauma the night of this lynching. And for the weeks and months and years after that lynching, it was a community crime. This wasn't done by the Klan, or people who had to wear a mask. This was done by teachers and clergy and law enforcement officers.
Oprah Winfrey: And people you had to deal with every day.
Bryan Stevenson: Every day.
Stevenson's team started their investigation in Alabama, but soon uncovered accounts of mobs murdering African-Americans throughout the southern states, and beyond.
As the cases mounted, Stevenson wanted to do something to commemorate the victims.
So in Montgomery, Alabama, the heart of the deep south – which still has dozens of monuments celebrating the Confederacy – Stevenson's equal justice initiative took on a bold project: they bought six acres of land and started construction on a memorial to the victims of lynching.

Wes Johnson's grave CBS News
Bryan Stevenson: Actually, you can still see names ...
Cannon: Yeah.
Sia Sanneh: from here.
Cannon: You can see it a lot better than I thought.
Bryan Stevenson: I think this looks great.
"The National Memorial for Peace and Justice," which was paid for through hundreds of private donations, will open to the public April 26th.
"I don't think we get to pretend that this stuff didn't happen. I don't think you can just play it off. This is like a disease. You have to treat it."
It contains 805 steel markers: one for each county where lynchings took place. And on each marker, the names.
The markers are suspended to evoke the horror of being strung up and hanged from a tree.
Oprah Winfrey: So you start with them at eye level, and then on this corridor, they begin to rise.
Bryan Stevenson: And then you get to this corridor, and this is when you begin to confront the scale of all of these lynchings.
Oprah Winfrey: Whoa.
Oprah Winfrey: This is something.
Bryan Stevenson: Yes, yes. We wanted people to have a sense of just the scale of what this violence, what this terrorism was.
Oprah Winfrey: So, this is over 4,000 that have been documented, but of course, there are more.
Bryan Stevenson: Thousands more. Thousands more--
Oprah Winfrey: Thousands more.
Bryan Stevenson: And--
Oprah Winfrey: Will we ever even know how many?
Bryan Stevenson: We will never know.
Uneven, rusted steel is meant to echo the many shades and skin tones of those African-Americans lynched.
Oprah Winfrey: Every name has its own story.
Bryan Stevenson: Yes, yes, that's right. Eliza Cowen was lynched in Laurens County, South Carolina.
Oprah Winfrey: Eliza, a woman.
Bryan Stevenson: A woman. A woman.
Oprah Winfrey: Were women often lynched?
Bryan Stevenson: They were, they were. Sometimes because they were accused of something, and then sometimes women would be lynched if they couldn't find the man they were looking for. They would lynch that man's wife or daughter or child.
Bryan Stevenson: And this was a minister, Reverend T. A. Allen, who began talking to sharecroppers about their rights. And because he was doing that, the plantation owners, the landowners got together and they lynched him. And the proof they used that he was somebody worthy of lynching is that when they found his body he had a piece of paper that talked about sharecropper rights. And the other piece of paper he had in his suit jacket was a note that said, "Every man a king."
Bryan Stevenson: A lot of these folks were lynched because they showed too much dignity. They showed too much humanity. He just wanted to be respected as a human being, and it got him hanged.
Bryan Stevenson: On the side here, what we do is we start to tell stories. We want people to hear and understand what happened to some of these folks.
Oprah Winfrey: Oh my. Robert Morton was lynched for writing a note to a white woman. David Hunter was lynched in Laurens County, South Carolina, for leaving the farm where he worked without permission.
Bryan Stevenson: Yeah.
Lynchings became so acceptable onlookers would send picture postcards to friends and family. This card, depicting the horrific image of a burned corpse, casually notes: "this is the barbeque we had last night." Even young children looked on.
Oprah Winfrey: You know, the thing that gets me in so many of the photographs that I've seen is the fact that people treated it like major events.
Bryan Stevenson: Yeah.
Oprah Winfrey: I think about who are those people--
Bryan Stevenson: Yes.
Oprah Winfrey: --that are smiling into the camera?
Bryan Stevenson: And I think it's done real psychic damage not just to black people, but to white people, too. Because you can't bring your child to the public square and have your child watch someone be burned to death, be tortured, to have their fingers cut off, to be castrated, to be taunted, to be menaced, to be hanged like that and not expect it to have some consequence, some legacy. And the legacy that I think it's created is this indifference to how we treat people who look different than us. And I think that's tragic. I don't even think that white people in our country are free. I think we're all burdened by this history of racial inequality.
Oprah Winfrey: What about everyone who says, and there are black and white people say it, enough already, of all that. That happened. That's the past. Let's move forward.
Bryan Stevenson: I don't think we get to pretend that this stuff didn't happen. I don't think you can just play it off. This is like a disease. You have to treat it.
To do that, Stevenson says, we need to talk about it. So along with the memorial, he is also opening a museum in Montgomery -- designed to teach people more about what he calls, "the ugly parts" of American history. It traces the African-American experience from enslavement to mass incarceration.
Bryan Stevenson: Slavery doesn't end in 1865, it just evolves.


Stevenson wants people to understand that lynchings were not just brutal footnotes in history, they reflected a belief in racial differences that reinforced segregation in the 1950s and 60s, and, he says, has resulted in a pattern of unequal justice today.
Bryan Stevenson: And now we live in a landscape where you see young black boys and men being rounded up. One in three black male babies born in this country is expected to go to jail or prison.
Oprah Winfrey: You actually think that slavery and lynchings led to African-Americans being disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system?
Bryan Stevenson: Yes, I do. And I think, actually, it's not a hard thing to understand, you know, I look at--
Oprah Winfrey: I think it is a hard thing to understand for people who think people get locked up, people are locked up because they commit crimes.
Bryan Stevenson: About 13 percent of the people illegally in possession of drugs in this country are black. That's about our proportion of the population. You know what percentage are arrested? That's about 35 percent. That is an echo of this consciousness that doesn't value the lives of these folks.
Equal value for every life is what Bryan Stevenson has spent his life fighting for. So now, soil from the place of Wes Johnson's lynching sits on this shelf in the museum in Montgomery – along with hundreds of others.
Bryan Stevenson: And right now, when we talk about our history, when we talk about our past, we're not telling the truth. We're just not. America can be a great nation, even though there was slavery, even though there was lynching, even though there was segregation. But if we don't talk about those things we did, we don't acknowledge those things, we're not going to get there.
Produced by Denise Schrier Cetta. Associate producer, Megan Kelty.
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Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2018 09:15AM by riverhousebill.