This book provides readers with a critical rhetorical study of Montgomery, Alabama’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Using critical genealogical methods, the authors argue that the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), led by Bryan Stevenson, uses these particular sites of memory for a variety of rhetorical functions, including the recovery of forgotten lynching pasts as well as reparatory efforts. The book takes the stance that Stevenson and the EJI are not only interested in helping American communities remember lynching histories but are also interested in using lynchin ... More

This book provides readers with a critical rhetorical study of Montgomery, Alabama’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Using critical genealogical methods, the authors argue that the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), led by Bryan Stevenson, uses these particular sites of memory for a variety of rhetorical functions, including the recovery of forgotten lynching pasts as well as reparatory efforts. The book takes the stance that Stevenson and the EJI are not only interested in helping American communities remember lynching histories but are also interested in using lynching legacies for modern-day mass incarceration reformation. Using the concept of “racial terrorism” the EJI uses places like the Legacy Museum to try and convince American audiences who may not have confronted fraught lynching pasts that they need to acknowledge these pasts if they hope to ever become involved in true reconciliation with those who suffer from the ravages of genocidal histories and traumatizing pasts.