Why I'm Going to the Lynching Museum and Memorial Alone or An Ironic Confluence

My wife and I want to go to the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The Museum and Memorial are an acknowledgment of the history of racial terror, that is littered throughout the American story. We want to go together. And one day, we may.

But not right now.

My wife is a US History and Government teacher and would love to go to the Museum and Memorial to help tell the story of lynching and racial terror to students in a California classroom that could read about it but not have the passion of the account transferred to her students.

I'd like to go for different reasons- it's a significant chunk of my experience- every male in my mom and dad's family left the deep south as soon as they were able- whether they left for college or the military (and sometimes both), they all left. I never gave it much thought until it occurred to me **how many** men left.  My dad was one of 10 kids, eight were boys. My mom was one of nine kids, six were boys. 14 boys **all** left the south to go north. I asked my uncle why one day, and he was pretty blunt. "They were stringin' boys up in trees here **well** after Brown v. Board passed here- wasn't safe to be a black boy in the Klan south." And there you have it- an entire generation of my family's men left the south because they were **literally** in fear for their lives.

Which is what makes today so depressing. As much as I'd like to share this experience with my wife, I'm **afraid** to do so. I'm scared to do so for *many* of the same reasons my kinfolk left the deep south in the first place.

I do not believe that my wife and I could travel safely in the deep south. I'm obviously Black. My wife is white.

And this is only depressing because it's not the first time that we've had to consider trips, and then think about where we're going, who we'd be around and whether or not that would be a safe experience. The example that jumps out at me most has to do with Bourbon. My wife **loves** her some Bourbon. Loves it so much, she went on the Bourbon tour in Kentucky, traveling along the Kentucky grasslands from distillery to distillery, tasting the finest Bourbons in the world and hearing the stories behind them (which as a history teacher I'm sure is as much of it as the Bourbon itself). She came back and talked about how awesome an experience she had and that we should do it, too. And honestly, I'd **love** to do it. But knowing immediately that the experience of a black man and a white woman driving through the grasslands (read: rural) is **distinctly not the same experience** and one that entails the possibility of danger (pulled over on a country road by a Good Ol' Boy cop, run off the road by rednecks yelling nigger- note **both** of these things have happened to me, and the first was scarier than the second). The kind of danger that puts **both** of us in danger.

Danger's not exactly my middle name, but I am willing to accept risk **for myself**. I can defend myself well enough and am, even at my age, faster than most people if we have to make a run for it. But in general, I try to keep Carol out of extra unnecessary risk- she does not do well when I'm being fucked with, and her speaking up might put her in physical harm, which is the most likely way I'd be killed by a cop, who would get away with it because apparently, you have to shoot someone **in their home** to be convicted.

So, in 2019, despite having the legal right to be married for (only) 50 years, we still don't have the ability to travel freely and safely. Not even to see a Museum and Memorial noting the nation's history of racial terror.

I'll take "Situational Irony" for 800, Alex...