Title: Equal Justice Under Law and the Fight to Hold Government Accountable
Description: Lobby exhibit complements University Ministry and Detroit-based artist and educator Carole Morisseau’s Healing Wall. The exhibit features four windows – each geared toward a critical law, court case or social reaction illustrating attempts to promote or limit equal justice for Black people. Also included are copies of the 1965 Alabama literacy test, used to disenfranchise African American voters, and a look at Black Lives Matter/#SayTheirNames through the pictures and words of Black people killed by police and civilians.
Curation and Design: Karla Aikens, Dennis Hillers
Dates: February 2021 (in full); February 2021-June 2021 (partial exhibit)
Illustration of the concept, "all men are created equal."
Consideration of the 14th, 15th, and 16th Amendments, the beginning and end of Reconstruction, and increasing racial animus.
Window 3 looks at the ushering in of Jim Crow through its slow dissolution with the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, newspaper announcements of MLK and Malcolm X’s deaths, and the 1967 Detroit Uprising.
Materials on the table refer to information found in Window 3 and give viewers the chance to take a closer look at documents like the Alabama literacy test.
Window 4 honors those whose lives have been stolen due to racially motivated violence and to the Black Lives Matter movement.