The Orange County Justice Coalition [Coalition] in collaboration with the Equal Justice Initiative [EJI] will participate in the Community Remembrance Project, a campaign to recognize the victims of lynching in America by erecting historical markers, collecting soil and creating a national memorial that acknowledges the horrors of racial injustice.
EJI has documented more than 4,000 racial terror lynchings in the United States between 1877 and 1950. Terror lynchings were violent and sometimes public acts of torture conducted to traumatize black people and create an atmosphere that maintained racial segregation and subordination. The Community Remembrance Project seeks to begin necessary conversations in communities to confront the injustice and inequality these acts of violence have created and overcome the “history that has undermined our ability to build a community where racial justice can be achieved.”
In April 2018, EJI held the opening of its national memorial structure dedicated to the victims of lynching at the center of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala. The structure has more than 800 steel monuments, one for each county in the US where a racial terror lynching took place. The name on the Orange County monument is Manly McCauley.
The Coalition is comprised of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], the Northern Orange Branch of the NAACP, Free Spirit Freedom, Hate-Free Schools Coalition, Community Awareness Political Action Ministry of First Baptist Church and the Orange County Human Relations Commission. Efforts are underway to include more community organizations and interested individuals to engage in various activities and events.
The EJI Community Remembrance Project has several components, and OCJC hopes to comply with each component through a series of community-based activities. For further information about the Orange County Justice Coalition, please contact Renée A. Price at 919-619-1139 or reneeprice2012@gmail.com, or James E. Williams, Jr. at 919-819-0364 or attwill9@gmail.com.