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URL Media, the startup devoted to Black and Brown media sustainability, recently hosted a day trip to Montgomery, Alabama. We mobilized media stakeholders to visit the Legacy Museum, which tells the story of the African-American experience from the Middle Passage to mass incarceration. Today Sara and Mitra are joined by Leonor Ayala, URL Media’s Chief of Recruitment to discuss how the Legacy Museum has changed their lives. Their work centers on creating a more just and equitable media ecosystem that centers Black and Brown communities. The trip preceded the Online News Association's annual convention in Atlanta, and underscores the importance of centering the truth of American history during this contentious election season.
Inspired to plan a family trip to the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, Mitra Kalita planned a visit to the Legacy Museum in 2018. Right away, Kalita knew this place was different. Its command of history, wielding of art and sensory experiences brings enslavement, and culpability, alive in a singular way. Kalita describes,
“What I felt emboldened by was this had a clear point of view, but was so rooted in fact. And it didn’t absolve white Americans of their role in this at every turn. And I think that was why it might be different from other renderings of African American history.”
Founded in 2018 by Bryan Stevenson, the famed civil rights attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, the Legacy Museum is a complex of three sites: a museum, memorial and monument to the millions of lives lost to enslavement. The museum sits on the site of a cotton warehouse – underlining how enslavement was the economic engine of colonial America and part and parcel of its foundation.
In 2024, Kalita was inspired to bring media stakeholders to this place of historical reckoning. It couldn’t be more timely: weeks before the 2024 Presidential election, this information is key to unlocking an accurate picture of American society and politics. Kalita and the URL Media team planned a bus trip to Montgomergy, Alabama where the museum is housed with a group of 17 people from across journalism and philanthropy.
Sara Lomax, President of WURD Radio and President of URL Media described the potency of the Legacy Sites in this way:
“Drawing that through line with such detail and accuracy from the middle passage to mass incarceration with a real multimedia execution. It was just steeped consistently in the humanity of, and the tragedy of, enslavement and segregation and Jim Crow and mass incarceration.
It humanized the individuals who have suffered American terror. And on the flip side, it put a bright spotlight on the inhumanity of white supremacy and the commitment, the deep commitment that this country has had to white supremacy and racism and oppression of black people and Native American people initially, and and it has evolved from there.”
Leonor Ayala, Chief of Recruitment at URL Media, was also deeply affected by the experience. What stood out to her was the centering of lynchings as racial terror in this country, and the ways it was covered in the newspapers of the time. Ayala reflected:
“And as I looked at headlines from newspapers covering lynchings… picturing people celebrating, white people celebrating the death and lynching of someone right behind them. I found that so horrific and hadn’t really seen that before… It’s something else to really walk through and see the numbers, the sheer horror… the how we documented this time in history.”
This news of this week, understood as a modern day lynching, was the execution of Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams. URL Media partner The Kansas City Defender led coverage on the case.. Despite the national outcry, and clear lack of evidence of guilt, Williams’ was executed on Tuesday September 24, 2024.
URL Media’s mission continues to be to center Black and Brown community media and keep these newsrooms sustainable, relevant, and funded.
We asked for reflections from the group that attended the Legacy Museum trip. This was one impression that stuck with us.
“The room in the Legacy Museum of the heads of enslaved Africans emerging from the sand as sounds of waves wash over you – that will stay with me. It beautifully preserves the memory of those who endured. The grueling voyage and the many who did not make it.
As a first generation African, our communities tend to stand apart from Black Americans. This is a stark reminder that this is our shared legacy. White supremacy has scarred us all deeply, and yet we endure.
This is a recommitment to the struggle against brutal oppression, wherever it presents itself. Thank you URL Media for organizing this tour. P. S. I was shocked that half of New Yorkers personally owned enslaved Africans in 1730. The North is not absolved in this history.”
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