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| Pre-crossing over the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma |
--The following was written for inclusion in a yet-to-be-published book. Once the book is published, I will update with the title, author's name, and how to purchase the book.
Long before I stepped onto the bus for the Alabama Pilgrimage, the table was being set and the path was being paved for my arrival. For every step I may have foolishly believed I took of my own volition, God laid the seeds long ago in others' hearts. People of two organizations – DurhamCares and the Mt. Level Community Partnership for Racial Justice, prayed, planned, and laid the groundwork for its coming to pass.
Both are Christ-centered organizations dedicated to bringing
the people of Durham, NC together as a beloved community. To explain what each
one does could fill pages, but in short, Durham has good people working
tirelessly to plan events like the pilgrimage that unite people of all colors,
ages, and churches, and promote truth telling and self-interrogation. As a
community, we enter uncomfortable places for the sake of healing and a more
just society. To get onto that bus is to commit to a path that has the
potential to alter the way you see the world permanently.
As a pilgrim you begin to see that each step in your journey
is the result of a confluence of decisions made through the years. I’ll come
back to that idea later.
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| These holographic images at Legacy Museum represent enslaved people in holding pens |
The idea of pilgrimage is nothing new. Faithful people travel long distances to stand in a place they believe to be holy ground. As your feet touch precious dirt, stories are shared of what happened on that ground and pilgrims must reckon with the full truth. It’s an enlightening, challenging, and sometimes painful experience. When you hear the whole truth, it changes how you see the place and what you believe it to be. It’s a moment of cognitive dissonance. Illusions are broken, and like Saul in Acts 9, the scales fall from your eyes. It’s a healing, but, of course, healing comes after a wound. The wound is in you, and you must ignore the new truth or adapt.
The Alabama Pilgrimage immerses you in the truth about our
country’s history with racism. It takes the abstract rhetoric of racism and
converts it into something concrete and undeniable. The Pilgrimage helps you to
process these things in an embodied way. It becomes a felt experience rather
than just a thought experiment. And oh, is it painful. The pain is eased by the
presence of the community you travel with. Make no mistake, you can travel to
these places alone or with a friend or two, but there is no value you can
assign to having a busload of fellow pilgrims to process with: Black, white, young,
old; they come with their own baggage and origin stories. And for the faithful, the Holy Spirit is there to help you process it and draw your attention to
things you need to see.
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| This cluster of statues guards the entrance to the Memorial for Peace and Justice |
The pinnacle of the week is the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. It’s a masterfully put together space that makes an argument: that enslavement, lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration are all the same thing in different wrapping paper. It’s an illusion to believe that our country has evolved because legalized slavery came to an end.
The problem never went away. But humans are just creative
and find new ways to inflict wrong upon those they deem inferior. And this
museum drives this point home again and again in that embodied way. You are confronted with mile markers that manifest as memories that will stay ingrained in your soul forever. You know you have found one when you linger and almost feel
like you cannot move from that spot.
One such moment for me was walking through the holographic
images of people in holding pens. This represents that after enslaved people
endured a grueling trip by sea in unfathomable conditions, they were then held
in jail cells before being auctioned of like cattle. As you walk by the cells,
they talk to you, asking where their children are. One woman sings a spiritual
called “Lord How Come Me Here.” – one of the saddest things you will ever hear.
Music is my heart language. I chose to sit down and immerse myself in this
woman’s cry of desperation. A fellow pilgrim entered the room and shared the space
with me. Just listening to this song as one. Not speaking. Just witnessing this
woman’s pain.
Lord, how come me here? I wish I never was born.
There ain’t no freedom here. I wish I never was born.
They treat me so mean here Lord. I wish I never was born.
They sold my children away Lord. I wish I never was born.
Lord How come me here? I wish I never was born.
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| Artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo's "Nkyinkyim" series at the Legacy Museum |
One of the first places you encounter in the museum is an
immersive large blue room, representing the Transatlantic voyage enslaved
people were forced to take. On both sides, you see life-like expertly crafted sculptures
of heads that look as if they are sticking out of the sand. Each one is unique and
expressive, telling a story of their emotional state. Each head is attached to bars
and chains that keep them shackled together in rows. This represents that
during the ocean crossings, many chose to drown at the bottom of the sea,
rather than endure the agony of leaving their people and identify behind. As I took in the
scene, my eyes were drawn to one face in particular – a child of about 4-5 years
old. At that time, my nephew was about the same age. I looked into the face of
this sculpture and all I could see was my nephew’s face, terrified by the ocean
waves and the brutality done to his family. My heart pounded and a sinking
feeling gripped my chest. I felt a combination of grief, anger, and
hopelessness.
As you walk through, hearing about the horrors of
enslavement, the terrors of lynching in the Jim Crow South, the degradation of
segregation laws, and the injustice of mass incarceration, there are records of
specific men, women, and children. There are excerpts from their journals and
private letters. And after 2-3 hours of this, it becomes too great to bear. For
me in that moment, I had a cyclical thought, “Who can understand it? Who can
understand it?” This came to my mind and became a mantra and the cry of my
heart.
Who can understand how this was allowed to happen? How did my
white ancestors fathom in their hearts that this was okay? How did they sleep
at night and teach their children in the daytime that this was right behavior? Our
group was scattered throughout the exhibits and not sticking together, so I sat
in this moment alone and finished up the museum before heading back to the
hotel.
As I rested my bones from the day, I hoped and felt
confident that my thought was pointing me to scripture. Indeed, I found two
verses. Jeremiah 17:9-10 says,” "The heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" I felt a peace
from seeing these words in scripture, validating my experience. God sees, and
he knows. Indeed, the heart is sick. What happened is evil and not okay. I then
found hope in the second verse: “Evil mean do not understand justice, but those
who seek the Lord understand it completely,” Proverbs 28:5. When our minds are
renewed we see justice through His eyes.
Places like the museum are holy, necessary spaces for those
with eyes to see. Only God can lead a heart to want to hear about injustice.
Until you get that bug, external pleas may fall on silent ears. Still, that’s
not an excuse to say nothing. I must recognize that I’m a product of someone
else’s brave decision to speak up. Earlier I spoke about the confluence of
events that led me to the pilgrimage. God recently reminded me of my growth and
progress with a full circle moment.
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| We all put our hands on the altar used by Dr. King in the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church |
In December of 2025, I attended one of the Mt. Level book
studies. This book was The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone. At
that event I saw an old friend, who I will call Penny for her privacy. This temporarily
stunned me. Why? Well, Penny is a pivotal person in my personal journey of
learning about the reality of racism. It was Penny who had the courage to speak
up and shine a light in my eyes. Penny and I used to attend the same church,
and she was one of the few Black members at that time.
In 2016, Philando Castile was murdered through an act of
police violence. She felt alone in that moment and hoped to hear our church or
at least some of the members speak out about what happened. Finding nothing but silence, Penny made a decision. She held a women’s event during which she
shared about the reality of the church’s complicity with racism, sharing passages
from the book Divided by Faith by Michael O. Emerson. In her eyes, what
happened was murder, but no one seemed to be talking about it. She shared her
thoughts and gave us a chance to ask any questions without fear of offending. It
was completely gracious and selfless and not something she had to do. She could
have just left or complained about her ignorant white friends and given up on
us. But she shared her story. And it was in hearing that story that moment that
gave me a jolt out of my stupor. Because here was my friend, someone I cared
about, telling me that this isn’t right. I had to pay attention. It was a
moment of cognitive dissonance that required action.
I no longer go to church with Penny, but here she was at The
Cross and the Lynching Tree book study -- 10 years later. And it all
flashed before my eyes. Her sharing, my decision to start learning, start
reading, start listening, stop denying. I then joined Blacknall Presbyterian Church, learned about
the Durham Pilgrimage, then the Alabama one. And here I was at this book club
invited by some of the friends I met from Mt. Level, still learning, and I see
Penny again. What a gift.
Like my encounters with Penny, the museum is an epicenter of
cognitive dissonance. It’s a place you cannot hide. And that dissonance demands
a response. For me, I choose to speak out and share what I witnessed at the
museum through my blog and podcast, knowing that another pilgrim may start
their own journey because of the message I and my fellow pilgrims have to share.
To listen to all the episodes of the Durham to Alabama podcast series, visit this page.
--Lindsey Dunn is a librarian, film critic, and storyteller who goes by the name 1 of my Stories who believes in the power of stories to transform lives better than any argument. She has been writing about film, books, and spirituality for almost two decades. Her pilgrimage to Alabama is just one of her stops on a journey to unlearn wrong and damaging rhetoric that she absorbed from childhood. You can find her writing and thoughts on her website 1ofmystories.com.
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