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Jennifer Rae Taylor, Senior Attorney
EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA
A Tangled Legacy Documenting and Memorializing the
Historical Roots of Mass Incarceration
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• EJI was founded in 1989 to represent men and
women on Alabama’s death row, at a time when the
state provided no legal assistance to people with
death sentences, and 1 in 4 executions nationwide
were happening in Alabama.
• EJI later launched project areas addressing excessive
sentences, children prosecuted as adults, parole
advocacy and re-entry services, and prison
conditions.
• Race and historical injustice was always a frame
through which EJI understood the work of
confronting mass incarceration, situating it as a
legacy of enslavement, lynching, and Jim Crow
segregation in the deep South. In the last decade it
has also emerged as an independent project area.
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Racial History Project
A History of Racial Injustice Annual Calendar (2012-Present)
Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave Trade Report (2013)Montgomery Slave Trade Historical Markers
Erected in Downtown Area (Dec. 2013)Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror Report
(2015) & LynchinginAmerica.eji.org Website (2017)
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Lynching History Local to NKU
Kentucky – 169 Documented Victims
• 1 victim in Gallatin County
• Will Green, 1878
• 5 victims in Boone County
• Parker Mayo, 1877
• Theodore Daniel, 1879
• Charles Smith, 1880
• Charles Dickerson, 1884
• Sam Scales, 1885
Ohio – 15 Documented Victims
• Fifteen Different Counties
• An unidentified victim killed in Holmes County in 1892 was
reportedly “the only negro” in the
otherwise all-white county
• As of the most recent census, Holmes County remained over 99% white.
Lynching History Local to NKU
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MARKER PROJECT
2015-Present
• Brighton, Alabama
• LaGrange, Georgia
• Oxford, Mississippi
• Austin, Texas
• Abbeville, South Carolina
• Tuscaloosa, Alabama
• Center, Texas
• Letohatchee, Alabama
• Selma, Alabama
• St. Augustine, Florida
• Gadsden, Alabama
• Kansas City, Missouri
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COMMUNITY REMEMBRANCE PROJECT
Soil Collection Project
2015-Present
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April 2018
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice
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April 2018
The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration
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Summer 2018
Segregation in America Report & Website
segregationinamerica.eji.org
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Truth, Reconciliation, and Recovery
• “Truth and Reconciliation are Sequential” EJI’s Racial History Project is working to support Truth-
Telling efforts as our staff also continues its present-day legal advocacy
• Mass Incarceration is Inextricably Linked to America’s History of Racial Injustice Criminal
justice has long been a tool of racial control, but it was also the institution least targeted by civil rights reforms and
today produces some of our society’s most persistent racialized outcomes.
• Our National Discourse Fails to Comprehend or Address This History of Inequality and
its Legacy Supreme Court rulings signal a willingness to roll back legal protections created during the civil rights
era, and polarized political rhetoric impedes productive and honest dialogue.
• Reshaping the National Conversation on Race is Difficult and Long Overdue EJI invites the entire nation to undertake this journey by visiting The Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and engaging in the Community Remembrance Project to confront our history with honesty, courage, and hope for the future.
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www.eji.org• Museumandmemorial.eji.org
• Lynchinginamerica.eji.org
• Segregationinamerica.eji.org
Jennifer Rae Taylor [email protected]