HERITAGE
LEADERSHIP*
Engaging with Contested Heritage:
Working Through and Walking Alongside (Part 2)
In the image above, you see rusted metal columns that hang at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Each column represents a county where one or more African Americans were lynched. The names of those who were lynched are etched on the column face, as is the date when each of these individuals were brutally murdered. The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) documents and interprets racial terror lynchings. They conclude, “Racial terror lynchings were violent and public acts of torture that traumatized Black people throughout the country. Tolerated and often aided by law enforcement and elected officials and designed to re-establish racial hierarchy after the Civil War, lynching was terrorism.” Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
Thank you to our contributing authors: Theresa Coble, Ryan Lindsay, Pamela Blair-Bruce, Christina Cid, Jim Craig, Carol Fitzsimmons, Rachel Galan, Keith Miller, Lisa Overholser, Bob Stanton, and Laura Westhoff
*The posture of a heritage leader is one of cultural humility, a readiness to rebalance power dynamics, and reciprocity.
Our Model for Engaging with Contested Heritage is for you even if you don’t think you’re dealing with contested heritage. Why? Because unlike history, which is produced through deep inquiry into the past, heritage is a selective picking and choosing of elements from the past in ways that support meaning making and identity formation in the present. Each of us decides what to emphasize and what to ignore from the past by assessing how closely those elements align with who we think we are (our identity) and assessing how consistent those elements are with the way we think the world is supposed to work (our global meanings or worldview).
The benefit of heritage is that it bolsters our sense of self and gives us a context within which to operate. But when someone else looks at the past and comes to different conclusions about what it means, it can feel like an attack on who we are. When we feel like our identity is threatened, we tend to rally with our in-group to reinforce our identity and fend off attackers.
Recently, as part of the Bob Stanton Speaker Series, Nicole Civita, author of Feeding Each Other: Shaping Change in Food Systems through Relationship, talked with our heritage leadership cohort about identity. She said,
We need to be cognizant of our intersectional identities — of why they are meaningful to us and the extent to which they may be socially constructed and imposed. We need to understand which privileges we carry and which ones we don’t, and we need to figure out how to be sensitive to the presence, absence, and mix of privileges at play in any situation. But we also need to be careful that we’re not mistaking identity categories for all of who we are. And we must be careful that we’re not allowing identity politics to define and determine how we show up for each other.
As Nicole reminds us, as central as identity is, it mustn’t constrain our ability to show up as whole people with and for each other.
Interpreters work at the nexus of heritage, where place, intersectional identities, and worldviews come together. We hope that our Model for Engaging with Contested Heritage will guide interpreters as they work through contested heritage and walk alongside others as they do likewise.
In the second part of this three-part article series, we’re introducing a Model for Engaging with Contested Heritage. In Part 1, we suggested that interpreters and visitors seek authentic content, trusted settings, places of social inclusion, ways to connect with the fullness of human experience, and opportunities to deepen our empathy, tolerance, and understanding. We explored concepts such as contested heritage, meaning making, crucial conversations, trauma, collective trauma, trauma exposure response, and trauma-informed heritage practice. In Part 2, we’ll examine contested heritage and four truth inquiry.
The Heritage Leadership faculty mentors and students at the University of Missouri - St. Louis propose a Model for Engaging with Contested Heritage that encapsulates our approach to addressing contested heritage topics at interpretive sites. Image by Heather Waterman and Theresa Coble.
Ideally, Contested Heritage Prompts Four Truth Inquiry
Jim:
Understanding why a particular piece of heritage is contested requires inquiry and engagement. In our model, four truth inquiry is where the action begins. Merriam-Webster defines truth as, “the body of real things, events, and facts.” For our purposes, this definition is incomplete. Thinking about little “t” and big “T” truth may be illustrative. Little “t” truths do not always relate to facts or tangible phenomena; they can also be perspectives that are grounded in lived experiences accumulated over time. Traditional ecological knowledge is an example of this kind of truth. Similarly, big “T” Truth, if such a thing exists in the social realm, has layers of meaning and incorporates a diversity of perspectives.
Carol:
Our understanding of the four truths comes from the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the 1990s. Following Apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu led South Africa in a truth-telling process. They adopted a four-truth framework because they believed it would foster understanding, accountability, and healing.
Ryan:
The first part of four truth inquiry is forensic truth. This is where you piece together the facts. But when you explore forensic truth, you’re not producing a static rendering of reality. Instead, you’re generating a more complicated and nuanced understanding of how place-based perspectives interact and change over time. That’s why it’s important to ask, “What lens are we using?” and “Whose voice is missing?”
Rachel:
The second part is personal truth. This is where you engage with facts through the lens of your own experiences, share those experiences, and listen to the experiences of others. Personal truth requires that each person examine their own lens on forensic truth, i.e., for assumptions and biases, and listen to the stories of others with empathy, perspective taking, and a readiness to honor story as sacred.
Set on a six-acre site in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the victims of racial terror lynchings. At the memorial, EJI uses sculpture, art, and design to contextualize racial terror and its legacy today. Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
Interpreters provide opportunities to engage with contested heritage at places like parks, historic sites, museums, memorials, zoos, wildlife refuges, and sites of conscience. At these places, we think about the meanings and significance of what happened in the past, we consider how these events influenced society then and now, and we reflect on the implications of these events for our lives today. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is a place of memory and a space to engage with contested heritage. Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
EJI developed their Lynching in America webpage to provide opportunities to hear recordings from those affected by the history of lynching in America, watch a film about a family’s journey to engage a painful past, learn about their efforts to fight racial injustice today, read the full report about lynching in America, and access a variety of teacher resources. As part of this project, and illustrated above, EJI developed an interactive map that allows viewers to explore at different spatial resolutions, including national, state, and county levels, the phenomenon of racial terror lynchings. Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
Laura:
The third part is social truth. This is where you focus on system-level phenomena. It’s also where things get messy because you’re obliged to hold in the same space all the different and competing points of view—which can and does create tension. But by saying “yes...and” to one person’s truth, and the next person’s truth, and then the next person’s truth, and so on, individual narratives are woven into “group narrative truth”—or truth that is generally agreed upon—and empathy may flourish within the system.
Pamela:
The fourth part is healing truth. Barbara Little, an Anthropology Professor at the University of Maryland, suggests that healing truth emerges from the reconciliatory process. It’s at this stage that participants restore dignity to victims without dehumanizing perpetrators. This is also where participants work to heal divides and do everything they can to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
Theresa:
Four truth inquiry is a way to hold diverging and contested notions of truth in the same truthful space. As powerful as it is, four truth inquiry does not provide us with clear answers about how to understand and interpret sites of contested heritage. Instead, it nudges us toward an iterative and ongoing inquiry process. It provides a set of markers so we can orient and reorient ourselves. It points us in a positive direction. And it helps us calibrate our progress on a journey toward healing and reconciliation.
Through their Community Remembrance Project, EJI supports communities as they “locally memorialize” victims of racial violence and educate their community about the history of racial injustice. The Community Remembrance Project encompasses many initiatives, including The Historical Marker Project, The Soil Collection Project, and the Racial Justice Essay Contest for high school students. The Soil Collection Project supports community members as they commemorate a victim of racial terror lynching by gathering soil at the site where the lynching occurred. Illustrated above, the soil is placed in large, glass jars labeled with the victim’s name (if known) and the date and location of the lynching. Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
Ryan:
Theresa, you use the phrase “understand and interpret sites of contested heritage,” and our model is all about engaging with contested heritage. But some people have a very different take on this issue. In a Law & Religion UK blog post, Simon Hunter said that people tend to view contested heritage as objects, events, or places that represent injustice or elicit deep pain and distress. He thinks this framing misses the point, because the phrase “contested heritage” is redundant. That is, Hunter argues that all heritage is or has been contested or is contestable. Further, “The implication inherent in the phrase ‘contested heritage’ is that there is somewhere another category of heritage…that is uncontestable, that has a past, present, and future that are so clear that none should touch it.”
Keith:
Hunter warns that if people “blind themselves to the truth that all heritage is contestable,” we’ll likely miss the fact that much heritage is contested and it’s contested by those in our society who we are least disposed to listen to and take seriously. Listening to marginalized people when they share their viewpoints, experiences, and critiques is central to the truth finding and truth telling process.
Bob:
Barbara Little explores what happens when heritage involves routinized patterns of violence. She says, “Violence haunts and constricts narratives. Therefore, examining intersections between past and present violence may help us see possibilities for healing through [the] rehabilitation of narrative.” Four truth inquiry sets the stage for the rehabilitation of narrative, and by extension, for healing and reconciliation.
In 2019, hundreds gathered at the Douglas County Courthouse in Omaha, Nebraska, to commemorate the lynching of Will Brown a century earlier. More than 400 community members filled jars with soil collected from the courthouse lawn. EJI indicates that “the lynching of Will Brown by thousands of rioting White people was part of Red Summer, a series of approximately 25 ‘anti-Black riots’ that erupted in major cities throughout the nation in 1919” including Houston, East St. Louis, Chicago, Washington D.C., Tulsa, and Charleston. Mayor Stothert urged attendees to reflect on our history of racial injustice and “to learn, and to be shaped by that history, to recognize that enormous racial tension and suffering were part of our past, and that affects our feelings and beliefs to this day.” Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
The Equal Justice Initiative & the Four Truths
Lisa:
The four truth approach is primarily an inquiry process, but it can also be evident in the way a site designs their facilities and shapes visitor experiences. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is in Montgomery, Alabama. The Memorial is sometimes referred to as “the lynching memorial” because it documents a particularly gruesome manifestation of racial violence in the United States: lynching. Thus far, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has documented more than 4,400 racial terror lynchings that happened in the U.S. between 1877 and 1950, that is, between Reconstruction and the post-WWII boom. I should note that although we frequently partner with the sites we feature in our heritage leadership articles, in this case, we did not partner with EJI to produce this article. Instead, we’re referring to our experiences at the site and to content available on their webpage.
Christina:
EJI built and operates the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Legacy Museum, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, and a visitor services hub. EJI, a nonprofit law office founded by Bryan Stevenson in 1989, represents clients sentenced to death and condemned to die in prison, challenges inhumane conditions of confinement, and works to expose racial bias in the criminal legal system. EJI created the Legacy Sites to provide a space for people to “gather, learn, and reflect on our history and its legacy” and “to foster a new era of truth and justice in America.”
Carol:
The Memorial focuses your attention on a series of rusted, metal columns. Each column represents a county where one or more lynchings occurred. On each column is etched the names and dates of every Black person EJI has thus far documented as having been lynched in that county. When you enter the Memorial, you walk in and amongst the columns, sharing space with the names of those who were lynched. As you continue to meander through the columns, the path descends and now the county-by-county columns hang above your head. One architectural critic noted that it’s as if these columns stand in judgement over you.
Laura:
The lynching of African Americans was terrorism designed to reinforce white supremacy and maintain racial segregation. As a historian, I tell students that it’s important to confront the reality of what happened and, in this case, to acknowledge the mindsets, mob mentalities, and policies that aided and abetted these crimes. As we learn about past atrocities, as we allow the depth of human suffering experienced by victims to seep into our awareness, as we consider how these terrorist acts affected the psyches of the perpetrators and by extension, dominant society, we are nudged toward grief. Grief keeps our hearts supple, and while it can mire us in anguish, it can also prompt action.
The Legacy Sites are powerful spaces and places, but do they illustrate four truth inquiry? Emphatically, yes!
EJI dedicated a Monument to the 1950s Victims of Racial Terror Lynchings that’s located at the entrance of the Peace and Justice Memorial Center—across the street from the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. EJI hosts community events and lectures by artists, writers, EJI staff, and scholars at the Center. The most active era for racial terror lynchings was from 1877 to 1950. This Monument commemorates 24 people who were killed in racially-motivated attacks during the 1950s, including Emmett Till. This photo shows an inscription honoring Russell Charley who was killed in Vredenburg, Alabama, on May 7, 1954. Charley was an employee of the Vredenburg Lumber Company. Though it was widely believed that Charley was lynched, local law enforcement did little to investigate, and no one was ever arrested or charged for the killing. Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
Jim:
EJI conveys forensic truth. At the Memorial, you see the names of African Americans who were lynched—and you learn when and where they were lynched. Perhaps because so many EJI staff are lawyers, they don’t skimp on evidence. In fact, their Slavery in America and Lynching in America, 3rd Edition reports “concretize the experience” of enslavement, racial terror, and racial inequality. The Legacy Museum’s exhibits trace a storyline from slavery to Reconstruction; from the Black Codes to Jim Crow segregation; from Klan-initiated actions to state-sponsored, state-condoned terror; and from the struggle for civil rights to mass incarceration. The exhibits elucidate facts (forensic truth), convey stories (personal truth), and track systemic forces (social truth) to support their main thesis: slavery didn’t end, it evolved.
Bob:
What strikes me is that the four truths are evident in every facet of EJI’s work. EJI provides legal support to young people like Kuntrell Jackson, who, at fourteen years old, was sentenced in Arkansas to life without parole. EJI represents men like Anthony Ray Hinton and Walter McMillian, who spent years together on Alabama's death row for crimes they did not commit. In Just Mercy, a New York Times #1 Bestseller and a major motion picture starring Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, and Brie Larson, we’re introduced to Walter McMillian and his family members who said, "We feel like they put us all on death row." Just Mercy tells the story of the birth of EJI and their efforts to provide legal support for prisoners on death row. For example, in 1985, Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. He spent 30 years on Alabama’s death row for a crime he did not commit. With help from Bryan Stevenson and EJI, Hinton won his release in 2015.
Pamela:
As EJI’s Community Educator, Hinton has appeared on Oprah. He’s also been featured on 60 Minutes. Reflecting on his experience of mass incarceration, Hinton said, “We went from the tree to the electric chair, from the electric chair to the gurney.” In his review of Hinton’s memoir, The Sun Does Shine, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison for opposing a racist system in South Africa. Anthony Ray Hinton spent 30 years on death row because a racist system still exists in America.”
When EJI cooperates in the adaptation of a best-selling book to the big screen, when they hire someone who’s spent time on death row to serve as their Community Educator, and when a bunch of lawyers support curating exhibits and constructing brick and mortar memorials, it’s pretty clear that they recognize the importance of combining four truth inquiry with crucial engagement.
In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested at his mother’s home in Birmingham, Alabama. He was wrongfully convicted on two counts of capital murder. He spent 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. In 2015, he was exonerated in court after EJI presented evidence demonstrating his innocence. Bryan Stevenson, who founded EJI, represented Hinton in court and said, “Race, poverty, inadequate legal assistance, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence conspired to create a textbook example of injustice. I can’t think of a case that more urgently dramatizes the need for reform than what happened to Anthony Ray Hinton.” Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
In 2014, Bryan Stevenson published a New York Times bestselling book titled Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Just Mercy tells the true story of Walter McMillian who, like Hinton, served time on death row for a crime he did not commit. EJI contends that “the death penalty in America is a direct descendant of lynching—a system that treats the rich and guilty better than the poor and innocent.” In 2019, Just Mercy was made into a feature film, for which EJI prepared a discussion guide. Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
Ideally, Four Truth Inquiry Happens in Tandem with Crucial Engagement
Rachel:
EJI launched their Community Remembrance Project to guide communities as they conduct assessments; engage in education, outreach, and online awareness campaigns; host community conversations; build local exhibits; conduct oral history projects; and devise their own approach to restorative truth-telling work. They invite communities to participate in EJI’s Soil Collection Project, Historical Marker Project, and Racial Justice Essay Contest (for 9th-12th grade public school students).
EJI celebrates with communities as they achieve significant milestones: “EJI will collaborate with local coalitions and community members to place a monument like those represented in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in their community…emphasizing the work done so far and standing as a symbolic reminder of the community’s continuing commitment” to racial justice and reconciliation. These initiatives demonstrate EJI’s approach to healing truth and reflect deep insight into what working through and walking alongside requires.
Christina:
I’m impressed with the work of the Oregon Remembrance Project. In 2021, they gathered on the front lawn of the Coos History Museum to install an EJI Historical Marker that acknowledged the lynching of Alonzo Tucker in Coos Bay in 1902. More recently, in partnership with Oregon Black Pioneers, they launched the Sunrise Project in eastern Oregon. This project features traveling exhibits and presentations that address Black settler experiences, the impact of sundown towns—that is, towns that mandated that Black people be outside city limits by sunset—and the Sunrise Project's effort to create new identities for towns in eastern Oregon as “sunrise communities.”
Healing truth emerges through deep partnerships, through acknowledgement, and through sustained efforts to repair and restore. EJI’s approach to the four truths plays out in tandem with their crucial engagement efforts and in partnership with communities across the nation.
Theresa:
Christina, we should close with a caveat. When we talk about EJI and the four truths, we’re not claiming that EJI used four truth inquiry to structure their research or plan their programs and outreach. Rather, we’re mapping our approach onto their content and initiatives to show that our model could be a tool to guide and elevate the work of interpreters.
EJI’s analysis of the problem of racial injustice and their approach to the solution is likely to resonate with interpreters everywhere: “We are haunted by our history of racial injustice in America because we don't talk about it. Ending mass incarceration and achieving equality, justice, and fairness for all Americans starts with learning and sharing the truth about our past.”
Anthony Ray Hinton was released from prison on April 3, 2015. This image captures the moment when, upon his release, Hinton is wrapped in the embrace of family members. Bryan Stevenson, Hinton’s lead attorney, smiles as he takes in the scene. In this PBS video, Hinton tells his story and shares how he claimed his life back after 30 years on death row. Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
An inscription at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice remembers victims, reveals the cruelty of white supremacy, and reminds us to bring our full humanity into the ongoing struggle for peace and justice:
For the hanged and beaten. For the shot, drowned, and burned. For the tortured, tormented, and terrorized. For those abandoned by the rule of law.
We will remember.
With hope because hopelessness is the enemy of justice. With courage because peace requires bravery. With persistence because justice is a constant struggle. With faith because we shall overcome.
Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Initiative.
Engaging with Contested Heritage, Engaging with You
In the third and final part of our three-part article series to introduce our Model for Engaging with Contested Heritage (coming in Legacy’s March/April 2025 issue), we’ll delve into crucial engagement, including exploring multiple perspectives through dialogue; honoring story as sacred; nurturing historical empathy; and supporting reflection, self-awareness, and self-care. We’ll also explore space, place, and being moved—essential elements that undergird and catalyze our model.
If this discussion has piqued your interest, dig deeper through these action steps:
- The Model for Engaging with Contested Heritage was developed by students and faculty mentors in the Heritage Leadership doctoral cohort at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. We’ll enroll our fourth heritage leadership cohort in August 2025. We’re accepting applications for the next online doctoral cohort that will take place during 2025-2028. Interested? Check out our promotional flyer and recruitment packet with information about how to apply.
- Is there a heritage site that you’ve experienced that engages in trauma-informed heritage practice? Tell someone about that site and how it’s influenced you.
- Think about your own heritage site—or a favorite heritage site. Imagine that the site is fully engaged in trauma-informed heritage practice. What’s happening? How could the site close the gap between where it’s at now and fully activated trauma-informed heritage practice? Create a tick list to close the gap.
Finally, check out these recommended resources:
- There is a wealth of content on the Equal Justice Initiative website, including a Lynching in America resource hub and Public Education resources related to bestselling books, documentary and feature films, videos, websites, reports, lesson plans, and community programs. Their interactive History of Racial Injustice Calendar also caught our attention.
- On July 26, 2024, the American Alliance of Museums published a blog posting titled, “Content Warnings in Museums and Galleries: Taking a Proactive Approach.” These insights could help you create safe spaces for four truth inquiry and crucial engagement.
- For a deeper dive into trauma-informed heritage practice, check out the Texas Historical Commission’s Crisis and Trauma Response Toolkit for Cultural Workers that provides 12 chapters that address grief, remembrance, storytelling, psychological first aid, ecotherapy, therapeutic art, resilience and more.
- Our model is based, in part, on our own experiences, understandings, and insights. But it’s also based on the scholarly literature. Learn more about the literature we cite by clicking this link: https://tinyurl.com/n4ztazps
