Summer of 2016 In response to the Equal Justice Initiative’s call to memorialize the sites of terror lynchings throughout the American South, Alessandra Marconi, Mauricio Salgado and Arielle Julia Brown travelled to Phillips County in June of 2016 as cultural workers (artists and activists) endeavoring to be in solidarity with programmatic and archival efforts toward the memorialization of the 1919 South Phillips County Mass Lynching. We endeavored to enter conversation, witness contemporary testimonies, listen to inherited oral histories, cite relics of generational inequities, build relationships with local community members and generally get a feel for the social and political landscape of the region.
Our hope from these conversations was that we might come to understand how our resources and knowledges as cultural workers can contribute to the ongoing memorial efforts in Phillips County toward restorative truth-telling.
Ahead of our trip to Phillips County, we were in contact with Mr. David Solomon, Mr. Robert Whitaker, Mr. J Chester Johnson, Ms. Sheila Walker, Dr. Richard Buckelew, Mr. Grif Stockley, Dr. Guy Lancaster, Mr. Bryan McDade, and Ms. Franziska Blome. Also in preparation for this trip we met with Ms. Kiara Boone and Mr. Benjamin Harmon at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery. We did this work in order to gather greater context about the call to memorialize terror lynchings. Last summer we met with the Rev. Jarvis Smith, Dr. Mary Olson, Ms. Patricia Kienzle, Ms. Alenora Williams, Rev. Andrew Gibson, Ms. Catherine Gibson, Ms. Ora Scaife Truitt and Dr. Theo Parham.