the Alliance of Baptists' Fall Gathering!

MPBC, Mayfield Memorial Baptist Church, Reeder Memorial Baptist Church, and the Alliance of Baptists joined together for an interracial pilgrimage to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama on November 11-13, 2023. 

Dr. Ben Boswell, Meta Commerse, Dr. Peter Wherry, Rev. Thomas Farrow, and Rev. Tara Gibbs led participants on this journey, and Alexis Tardy and Rev. Elijah R. Zehyoue were the keynote speakers in Montgomery. 

The National Peace and Justice Memorial is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslavement, lynching, racial segregation, Jim Crow, and police brutality. The Legacy Museum tells the story of how our nation went from enslavement to mass incarceration. Together they provide a fuller context of the history of racial violence in the United States and the contemporary manifestations of that violence. Additionally, they help to show how racial violence was and is common in our society. The hope of the museum and the memorial is that if people know what happened and is happening, we will be moved to act differently and chart a different course. 

Bryan Stevenson, the visionary behind the museum and memorial, has said that we cannot understand most of life’s important things from a distance, we must get close. As we seek to understand racism and ultimately reject it, and dismantle its oppressive structures, we cannot do it from a distance. We must get close to the stories of people who have suffered the most from its violence and brutality. We must acknowledge the roles of some of our institutions and ancestors, and we must commit ourselves to reparations; renewal, and reconstruction as we chart a new, courageous, and imaginative path. And we must do all of this together, guided by the spirit of God.