Open Hearts, Open Minds #3: A Morning about Reparations, Lynchings, and Restorative Justice

So already, yesterday morning, I attended an online convening hosted by Northeastern Law School's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ). I first became aware of the CRRJ some years ago through its work with Cambridge Rindge and Latin School's Kimbrough Scholars Program.* Over the years, I've continued to pay attention to the CRRJ's efforts to seek legal and other forms of justice for the victims of racial injustice and their families. I've especially appreciated the CRRJ's commitment to "saying their names"--to asserting the individuality and humanity of victims--and to dignifying them and their families with respectful, responsive attention.

Yesterday morning's event was part of an all-day program called "Lynchings: Reparations and Restorative Justice."** Members of the public could register to attend the morning session, which created multiple contexts for understanding the need for reparations and the status of current reparation efforts; invited (not me) guests participated in an afternoon session the intent*** of which was "to lay the foundation for the launch of a formal organization designed to advocate on behalf of individuals and communities harmed by historical lynchings." You can read more about the event in this article**** on News@Northeastern, published just today.

It was an awfully good morning--awful in that many of the awful stories that needed to be seen and told were seen and told, good in that institutional efforts are being made and designed to do right by lynching victims and their families.

I write about the event today because it did so much to open both hearts and minds. I commend the designers of the event for their multi-generic approach to getting the audience to feel emotionally and to grapple intellectually. What better way to garner support and commitment?

During the day, there were four photomontages,***** two in the morning and two in the afternoon, one called "Lynched" and one called "Reflected" in both sessions. So the abundance of spoken language that dominated the day was punctuated by visual language that penetrated our consciousnesses in different ways.

The first part of the morning was dominated by visuals and visual art. We as participants looked at photos not only of lynching victims, but also of their family members, the inheritors of the loss, the memories, the emotional trauma, and the financial hardship associated with those lynchings, even if they hadn't known the victim personally. The mind opened, but the heart especially opened.

After that, we heard the artist Dread Scott talk about his very highly affecting visual and performance art. His installation representing the death of James Byrd in Texas in the late 1990s, called "Jasper the Ghost,"****** which he talked about, brought me right back to that moment when I first heard of James Byrd's brutal murder--and when I'd had to wrestle simultaneously with the inhumanity of the perpetrators, the dehumanization of James Byrd (shades of Hector's body being dragged around the walls of Troy by Achilles, but without the gods to interfere to preserve it, keep it intact), and the truth that "this is still happening." I share with you a photo of one detail, and I hope you'll go to the web site and see the whole installation. Let's face it: we have to squirm and feel queasy if we're going to reckon with the unacceptable hideousness of lynching and insist that there be a collective tangible response to it. The mind opens, but the heart especially opens, even though it wants to run and hide.

After Dread Scott's presentation, there was a panel of family members of lynching victims whose stories were different factually but often consonant thematically. The panel's moderator asked wonderful questions of the participants, allowing all of us as to wrestle with questions about the effects of learning of a "lynching in the family" at different points in one's life. But stories always exert a certain emotional force: there was no lynching in the family that didn't somehow mark family members, shape their relationship with the world. Again, the mind opened, but the heart especially further opened.

So my heart was good and open by the time some of the more academic, political, and career activist speakers began to speak: their important statistics and analyses of trends and challenges didn't hang in the air as depersonalized generalizations, but came alive in relationship to the names, faces, and events that we'd heard about in the day's preceding segments.

By the time I heard Joey Mogul talk on the panel entitled "US Reparation Movements: Applying the Lessons" late in the morning session, both my heart and my mind were fully engaged. I was completely inspired by the work being done--not without roadblocks at times--by Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, which he co-founded. As the organization's web site explains,

In 2013, a Reparations Ordinance was drafted to provide redress to approximately 120 African American men and women subjected to racially-motivated torture, including electric shock, mock executions, suffocation and beatings by now former Police Commander Jon Burge and his subordinates from 1972 through 1991. . . .

Finally on May 6, 2015, after decades of grassroots struggle, the Chicago City Council passed the reparations package for the Burge torture survivors and their family members.*******

The work of CTJM--I screen shot this slide during Mogul's presentation--excited me because it's designed not only to provide financial compensation, but to extend itself into the community--particularly into the schools and counseling centers. Once the COVID-19 pandemic isn't dominating the world and daily work of Chicago and everywhere else, perhaps all of the plan's aspects will become reality, especially given that Lori Lightfoot is now the mayor.

So what's my latest hearts-and-mind thinking? For those of us who design programs that are about reaching out and being sure people are seen and treated with dignity, we need to remember the power of art and the power of storytelling to get people feeling as well as thinking. We also need to think of the power of various genres and "languages" to engage various people. Finally, we need to think of how we sequence experiences. The Center for Civil Rights and Restorative Justice created a program with excellent architecture: it did a great job of respectfully but demandingly bringing us into the problem-and-possibility space yesterday morning.

* Northeastern University School of Law. The Kimbrough Scholars Program. The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. https://crrj.northeastern.edu/the-kimbrough-scholars-program/. 

**  Screen shot of image on Northeastern University School of Law. The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. https://crrj.northeastern.edu/.*** . . . according to the agenda I could print up while I was participating in the webinar!

**** Callahan, M. (2020, November 17). Ta-Nehisi Coates, Angela Y. Davis make the case for reparations for families of lynching victims. News Northeastern . https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/11/17/ta-nehisi-coates-angela-y-davis-make-the-case-for-reparations-for-families-of-lynching-victims/. 

*(5) I think there were four different photomontages, but I can't say for sure since I didn't attend the afternoon session.  

 *(6) Screen shot of photo of one detail of this installation on Scott, D. (2020, September 6). Jasper the Ghost. Dread Scott. https://www.dreadscott.net/portfolio_page/jasper-the-ghost/. 

*(7) (2020, August 21). About. Chicago Torture Justice Memorials. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Fellowship. https://chicagotorture.org/.