I’m sitting in front of a gigantic wall at the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery. It’s titled the National Monument to Freedom. I’m looking at the millions of names on this wall and thinking of the 10 million enslaved persons who were in the United States that they identify. I’m thinking of them. Their struggles. Their pain. Why haven’t their names been spoken before? Why haven’t their stories been told? Why are we ashamed of them?
Then I ask myself the hard questions, especially after visiting the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, today. If I lived during slavery would I have been an abolitionist? Would I have had the courage to be part of the Underground Railroad? Would I have had the courage during the Civil War to say slavery was wrong? Would I have fought to free the enslaved? Would I have been part of the Civil Rights Movement? Would I have had the courage to participate in Freedom Rides? To walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and be beaten? Would I have marched from Selma to Montgomery to help give African Americans the right to vote?
I wonder the ifs . . .
Now today, at the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, they give us res flowers to place in water below the names of the millions of enslaved. To remember them, to remember their struggles, and to think . . . what am I doing to remember them and to help end the racial injustices we still have in our country.
I have family members who still say the Civil War was caused by states rights and not slavery. I have family members who say the Confederacy is our heritage and should be celebrated. What can I do to help them learn the truth? To know the darkness African Americans faced in our country and to know that things need to change.
I hope that I can bring this knowledge to my classroom and to those I know. To help them know that the enslaved may not have had a voice, but as an educator, and human being, I can make sure their voices can be heard now.
Coretta Scott King said, “Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.”
The flower I placed in the water below this wall today is my promise to let their voices be heard and to never forget the past by continuing to support causes I know that will make a difference. I’m so grateful to be here on Juneteenth and to know this new federal holiday is helping their voices be heard.