The Freedom Center is mounting an exhibit about lynchings of blacks in the United States between 1882 and 1968, to run from January 19 through May 31. It will include an image (photo?) of a Clermont County lynching. It is certainly necessary to remember our history. But James Buchanan, a Freedom Center advisor, said that educating people about history will promote healing (or at least "a sense of healing"), and will somehow help protect human rights and teach us to stop genocide and hate crimes around the world. For the future. An exhibit about current genocide and hate crimes, particularly slavery around the world today, would be more to the point. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is sponsoring one of the community "conversations" about the exhibit. No doubt they will discuss current illegal but existing slavery between north African and sub-Saharan African peoples as part of the bridge to understanding. The Center's web site does, however, feature a section on modern slavery.
The lynching exhibit is supposed to be about the future. The Freedom Center is not paying close attention to the present. The Tuskegee Institute has recorded 3,437 lynchings of black Americans from 1882 to 1968, and 1,293 lynchings of white Americans. While it's difficult to find statistics, according to the Washington Post now 90% of black American murder victims are killed by other black Americans, and those numbers far outstrip nearly a century of lynchings, horrific as they were.
One year ago, a visit to the Freedom Center found it fairly bare of visitors and new exhibits. The building had much unused space, but one long hallway gallery was full of unannotated portraits of people from around the world, lovely photos. It wasn't clear what the purpose of the exhibit was. The people weren't slaves. They were generally poor, but not horrifyingly so. What was the unifying thread? Maybe it was the absence of anyone who appeared to be of northern European ancestry. Perhaps the purpose of the lynching exhibit is part of the Freedom Center's apparent mission to say "us good/them bad."
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Now you will start telling that whites were non behind Genocide of Red Indians, Whites did occupy other countries, They invited them to rule them blah blah blah.
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