The 2026 J29 Coalition Cohort kicked off their cohort experience with a learning trip The Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama. The following article is a reflection from cohort member Robbie Ortiz on his experience at The Legacy Museum.
A right response; a shameful response. The wrong conclusion; a redemptive conclusion.
The Right Response
We walked in the Legacy Museum in historic Montgomery, Alabama and collected our personal items from security, taking our first steps into the exhibit. I encountered what appeared to be normal museum panels of information. Photos and introductory paragraphs prepare visitors for the exhibits ahead. Distinctly heard, though faintly, from the room ahead were the lapping sounds of waves; heavy waves. Walking beyond the wall separating us from the wave room, little could prepare me for what I would see and what would freeze me in place. A dark room lit only by the soft, moving hues of blue and white light projecting waves with no beach - you are in the middle of the ocean. I could almost smell the salt and dark storm clouds above. A path carved before me as if Moses’ staff separated the waters to walk through. On either side, countless and no higher than knee level, are clay busts of enslaved Africans in various forms of bondage and chains. Some in rope, some linked together by the neck, some restricted by a plank of wood fixed tightly under the neck, resting on their shoulders. Their faces and eyes deeply emotive yet lost and lifeless; ghosts. Two boys, neck-deep in the water, no older than five, lean on each other with breathless faces. A mother standing against a wooden pike, her neck tied to it, feeds an infant at her naked breast. One man wails and turns back, looking at his companion who stares at him with the certainty of a man who’s facing his death. These faces reflect the shadow in the moving tides in an endless, overwhelming metronome. Were it not for the museum’s strict rules, you could reach out and touch these hands, hold their hands; and I long to do so. These are the forgotten ones who didn’t make the journey across the ocean. The ones who still today are somewhere beneath the salty sea, scattered. I notice within me the right response: deep empathy and sorrow.
A Shameful Response
As we progress through time in each room, moving forward 100 years, 200 years at a time, we begin to see the faces and the words, the laws and systems built to keep these people in bondage. They are exploited for financial gain and are controlled as property. The more suffering I encounter my empathy begins to move to a terrifying response. As I look upon the smug faces of white children beneath picket signs that say, “whites only”; as I see pictures of wounds from lashes on the backs of black men and women; as I read stories of children being taken from their mothers over and over again: I am beginning to hate; this is what rises up in my heart. The time periods displayed on the wall stretched out from year to year show the active and intentional perpetuation of this evil system, finding every loophole and law and systemic manipulation to dehumanize and maintain control over an entire people group. I cannot understand or fathom how any person could justify and enjoy such cruelty. In photo after photo, I see the guilty oppressors, and my heart turns toward hating them, and I know it’s wrong and I don’t delight in it, and in fact I am ashamed of this response. I begin to turn my hate inwards. Is this what is really inside me? Is this what wells up to the surface?
The Wrong Conclusion
The museum does not relent. All five senses are in constant stimulation. The curators of this space, rightfully, do not allow any part of you to get off free. An embodied approach to make you feel as much as you can stand so that feeling and understanding mix into some form of transformation. It is a heavy place. You pace through door after door into room after room, and the story only continues, and the suffering only continues, and the oppression only continues for my part. I found it beginning to be too much. I felt helpless to see any way that we could ever stop the tide of hate and evil. Will we learn from these past mistakes and see the days renewed? Like the tides in that first room, I began to believe that changing the hearts and minds of people is as hard as turning the tides. One would need a lever to shift the moon to make those waters change direction. As we come into contact with the room filled with jars of dirt which were collected from the sites of thousands of lynchings, I’m beginning to be undone. I’m beginning to think nothing short of Christ and the trumpet sounding will ever make anything right again. My only hope is Maranatha, and I see no way that I can do or see any change in this time or in the future, and I feel like I am sinking. I wonder why I came here at all.
A Redemptive Response
At that moment of despair, I walked through a final hallway. It’s small and dark and tight. Walls that squeeze in on you like the entryways of the great cathedrals, causing you to feel small and confined, only to open up into a grand room three stories high, colored in embracing, gentle creme and orange. Nothing garish but softly warm like morning light. High above, directly on the ceiling, hammered copper shining and glinting. All around, every inch, from the floor to the vaulted copper ceiling, the faces of the Saints of civil rights that have gone before. Grand in scale, the portraits of the great leaders (as far back as resistance to slavery was recorded), the faces looking at you directly in the eye with no judgement or sternness, but with the gentle strength of those who know that it will be all right. The resilience and kindness you see in a grandmother’s eyes when she tells you, “I have seen this, I have been there. I have survived. I have overcome, and so too shall you, child. Hanging above all of this, high and sweet and strong, the voices of black singers. Gently singing over me a spiritual of sorrow and hope. I stand motionless. I listen. Close my eyes, and tears rise from the depth of my stomach and find their way to my cheeks. I feel lifted and embraced and fortified and, in the same way, also spurred on by these voices and these great faces around me. They will not let me despair and yet allow me to lament. They invited me into the continuing work, reminding me that each of them saw their work progress but never fully accomplished. Should that be our lot, how beautiful and humbling to one day be counted among this great cloud of witnesses.
Don’t let nobody turn you around. We shall overcome.