GUTTER CREDITS132 OCTOBER 2019
National
Memorial for
Peace and JusticeA sobering monument
dedicated to African Americans
who have been victims of racial
terror—whether by slavery,
lynching, segregation or police
brutality—the memorial was
conceived by human-rights lawyer
Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice
Initiative and designed by MASS
Design Group. Completed just last
year in Montgomery, Alabama,
the memorial features a haunting
centerpiece: 800 rusting steel
columns—each representing a
US county where a lynching took
place—suspended from the ceiling
and engraved with the names of
more than 4,000 victims. Even
more shocking: The surrounding
fields hold hundreds more columns
waiting for counties to claim
them—and own up to their part in
American racial injustice.“The memorial has
a terrible beauty. It
has this tonal match
between program,
structure and site
that’s not easy to
achieve-—it retainsaustere and forthright
qualities, with a shift
from lightness in the
landscape to rhythmic
heaviness as you getcloser to it.”
THOMAS WOLTZ,
landscape architect DBIMAGES/ALAMY132 OCTOBER 2019
National
Memorial for
Peace and JusticeA sobering monument
dedicated to African Americans
who have been victims of racial
terror—whether by slavery,
lynching, segregation or police
brutality—the memorial was
conceived by human-rights lawyer
Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice
Initiative and designed by MASS
Design Group. Completed just last
year in Montgomery, Alabama,
the memorial features a haunting
centerpiece: 800 rusting steel
columns—each representing a
US county where a lynching took
place—suspended from the ceiling
and engraved with the names of
more than 4,000 victims. Even
more shocking: The surrounding
fields hold hundreds more columns
waiting for counties to claim
them—and own up to their part in
American racial injustice.“The memorial has
a terrible beauty. It
has this tonal match
between program,
structure and site
that’s not easy to
achieve-—it retainsaustere and forthright
qualities, with a shift
from lightness in the
landscape to rhythmic
heaviness as you getcloser to it.”
THOMAS WOLTZ,
landscape architect DBIMAGES/ALAMY