Design

How a Rwandan Hospital Inspired a Proposed Lynching Memorial

“Countries like Rwanda have found it necessary to build memorials to reflect on the atrocities of their past … We have yet to do this in the United States.”
Behind Michael Murphy is a rendering of a proposed national memorial to America's lynching victims.Bret Hartman/TED

Included in this week’s TED conference in Vancouver was a preview of a proposed national memorial in honor of the more than 4,000 African Americans who were lynched between 1877 and 1950.

The proposed Memorial to Peace and Justice would sit on a hill overlooking Montgomery, Alabama. The design features rows and rows of columns hanging from a ceiling, plus a field of identical columns waiting “in purgatory” to be placed around Alabama to mark the locations of lynchings.