In 2024 I went to Montgomery, Alabama with the Kimbrough Scholars. We visited the Legacy Museum, Lynching Memorial, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, two National Parks Service Civil Rights Visitors Centers (in Montgomery and in Lowndes County), the Mothers of Gynecology Monument, and a range of other historical sites. We also participated in the Elmore Bowling Initiative's educational conference, including a discussion with teachers from Alabama.
I filled up several sketchbooks in a rapid scramble to document everything I experienced. I wish I could include more sketches here, but a lot of them are pretty graphic given the topic. The selection shown below are are more like visual notes than full-on drawings, but they represent a mountain of thoughts and feelings that I'm still doing my best to reckon with.
Acrylic paint marker on Uglybooks sketchbook
One of the most powerful experiences I had at the Legacy Museum was viewing the Equal Justice Initiative's Soil Collection - a collection of soil gathered from lynching sites. Each jar of soil bears the name of the victim (or in many cases victims). I stayed here for a long time listening to the recorded voice of Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit" until a colleague came to join me. We held each other and cried for a very long time as we confronted the weight of all of this.
Notes from one of the the Lowndes County Interpretive Center's videos about the march to Selma.
More notes from one of the the Lowndes County Interpretive Center.
Sketching in the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park was more of a coping mechanism than anything else. Of the three Legacy Sites, that one hit me the hardest.
I got up super early one morning to walk around by myself and process. I stopped to sketch the mist on the water of the Alabama River, where ships carrying enslaved people once docked. We'd visited the Legacy Museum the day before, so I felt a lot of complicated feelings doing such a fluffy little sketch on that spot.
We were lucky enough to meet Michelle Browder after we saw her incredible Mothers of Gynecology Monument, and I did this quick sketch of her while she talked with our group. What a skilled artist and an epic badass! She encouraged us to learn from our visit, and to reckon with it.
I was still doing that drawing-a-day challenge, and the prompt for the day I got back was "white". It fit right in with these notes so I wanted to include it here.
