In a week that began with Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama, a new chapter of American history has begun today with the official opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, a place so central to the crimes and injustice of white supremacy in the South. The memorial commemorates and dignifies the more than 4,400 black men, women, and children who were lynched by white mobs between 1877 and 1950.

"The columns meet you first at eye level, like the headstones that lynching victims were rarely given," Campbell Robertson writes for the New York Times. "But as you walk, the floor steadily descends; by the end, the columns are all dangling above, leaving you in the position of the callous spectators in old photographs of public lynchings."

Why Build a Lynching Memorial? Video via Equal Justice Initiative on YouTube.

The memorial aims to educate for a more informed dialogue and includes a section with material on volunteer opportunities and a voter registration booth.