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Lynching memorial opens as Congressman John Lewis reflects on nation's past

Civil Rights icon Congressman John Lewis spoke to WRAL News recently about the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which will serve as a monument to the victims of lynching in America.

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By
Lena Tillett
, WRAL anchor/reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — The great jazz singer Billie Holiday described their hanging, limp black bodies as strange fruit.

They were also fathers, mothers, sons and daughters.

"We have not been acknowledged, my family, as victims of a lynching," said Josephine Bolling McCall, the daughter of a lynching victim.

For the first time in U.S. history, a museum will pay tribute to lynching victims. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, located in Montgomery, Alabama, will serve as a monument to the victims of lynching in America.  

"My hope is that people will leave that space prepared to say, never again can we tolerate racial bias and bigotry anywhere,” said criminal defense lawyer Bryan Stevenson.

Stevenson spearheaded the opening of the museum through his organization known as the Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI

Thanks to the group's research, the names of over 4,000 black men and women lynched between 1877 and 1950, mostly in the Jim Crow South, have been identified. EJI have recorded the North Carolina residents who were lynched.

Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights icon who represents George in the U.S. House, spoke to WRAL News during a brief trip to Raleigh about the country's history of lynchings.

“It must never, ever, happen again in America – or any place in the world," Lewis said.

Lewis spoke to WRAL News about the museum and this dark chapter in American history.

"I'm going there to the opening of that museum, and I'm going to be one of the speakers," he said. "I just hope and pray that I can make it through it. I've seen the pictures, and people were so cruel.”

EJI calls them terror lynchings because they were meant to send a message to African-American communities to follow the white supremacy structure or face a brutal death.

“To not only have people hanging from trees but they burned people," Lewis said. "It was acts of inhumanity.”

Victims were also often maimed, dragged or shot to death.

Oliver Moore, a Tarboro resident, was accused of assaulting two young white girls.

Before he could stand trial, a group of masked men took him out of his jail cell and to a wooded area on the Wilson-Edgecombe county line. There, they hung him before shooting him repeatedly. His body hung from a tree, and state records note that thousands of onlookers traveled to the scene to view his lifeless body.

"You had crowds watching," Lewis said. "People would take their children. People would leave their homes with their little children, would leave church, and go and watch the lynching. It was like a happening.”

The real evidence again Moore may never be known. But EJI found charges against victims were often dubious or completely false.

Said Lewis: "We tried to sweep it all under the rug. We tried to forget it. But I'm so glad that this young brilliant African-American lawyer came along and said we must not forget.”

Stevenson says he hopes finally recognizing this history of racial violence in America will bring healing to everyone.

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