'Legacy of Lynching' exhibition live at Brooklyn Museum

CAIRO – 31 July 2017: A new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, “The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America”, aims to tackle racial injustice within the criminal justice system, bringing to light prevalent contemporary issues that still haunt black Americans in particular, such as police brutality. The exhibition is coordinated with the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) group and with support from Google.

Lynching is a practice wherein black Americans were hung in order to reinsert white supremacy, which came in the aftermath of the abolishment of slavery. The exhibit documents cases of lynching between the 19th and 20th centuries through interactive videos compiled via research collected by the EJI, all done without the use of graphic photographs or illustrations. The focus is on personal stories, a way of humanizing the victims of racial violence and bringing them to life for this modern era.

By opting to not display the full horrors of the era, the exhibition remains respectful rather than dipping into exploitation, which enables their message to reach a wider audience. "The Legacy of Lynching" will run from July 26 – September 3, 2017. The EJI also plans to open a monument in Montgomery, Alabama in 2018 titled "The Memorial to Peace and Justice", which honors the victims of lynching.