Group Promotes Creating Memorial in Tyler for Victims of Lynchings
Activism
Supporters of creating a memorial in Tyler recognizing those who were killed by lynchings, gather on on the square in downtown Tyler. Photo by BRANDSON RATCLIFF
By JUDE RATCLIFF/Staff Contributor
A recent budget proposal in the city of Tyler held no plans for a memorial in honor of the many lynching victims in Tyler over the years to be installed at the new Smith County Courthouse. The activist group, “We Remember Tyler,” who says its goal is to promote awareness of injustices, is advocating for the installment of the memorial.
“This [lynching] monument would recognize the racial terror lynchings that occurred in Smith County, and bring dignity to the victims in the silence and begin the first steps of moving forward towards racial reconciliation,” said Carolyn Davis, leader of We Remember Tyler. “We’re hoping that, in regards to trying to get a memorial erected on the grounds of the new Smith County Courthouse, that people will advocate for that, people will come out.”
“We Remember Tyler exists to promote community awareness, education and public reckoning around racial terror lynchings in our area through partnerships with local stakeholders and the Equal Justice Initiative,” the group’s website states. “As inter-generational, multi-gendered, interfaith community members, We Remember Tyler will tell our story with dignity, truth, and resilience in order to move toward reconciliation.”
DG Montalvo, a social justice activist in Tyler, advocates for a lynching memorial in his book, “Tyler’s History of White Supremacy.” He says the only way to move past the history of racism and prejudice in Tyler is to have a “reckoning with truth,” and to acknowledge the history of the city openly to engage in discourse and conversation about it.
“It takes acknowledgment and self-awareness in order to make change,” Montalvo said. “It seems we’ve made a social decision as a society to never address the Civil War, Jim Crow, the racial lynchings that took place, and the history that’s happened right before our eyes. It’s kept silent. It’s something that needs to be addressed so that we can move on and truly become, like Martin Luther King, Jr. said, a beloved community.”
Current monuments at the downtown square include the policeman’s prayer and a Confederate soldier memorial erected in 1969, which counts “loyal slaves” as part of the Confederate population. The Confederate Soldier Memorial is significant in that it was erected at the height of the Civil Rights movement.