The National Memorial to Peace and Justice, Civil rights memorial in Montgomery, United States

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is a memorial square in Montgomery holding 805 suspended steel rectangles, each the size and shape of a coffin, engraved with the names of documented lynching victims and their counties. The six-foot beams hang from a flat roof grid on thin rods above a sloping floor, so visitors descend among them. Replica beams lie in rows on the ground outside.

The Equal Justice Initiative opened the memorial on April 26, 2018, on a six-acre site in downtown Montgomery, near the former market where enslaved people were sold. Its 805 steel columns come from a multi-year study that documented almost 4,400 racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950. The $20 million complex was privately funded, and Bryan Stevenson drew on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Apartheid Museum.

The name reflects the intention to remember thousands of victims of racial violence and make their stories visible. Visitors walk among the hanging columns and experience how the ground slopes downward, leaving the monuments suspended overhead.

The entrance is located on Caroline Street and the site is open Wednesday through Sunday between 9 AM and 5 PM. Visitors should wear sturdy shoes as the terrain slopes and some paths cross uneven ground.

Each column exists in duplicate, allowing communities to collect their copy and install it in their home region. So far, only a few counties have accepted this offer, showing the ongoing difficulty of confronting this history.