The scandal here isn’t only that more Black people aren’t honored. The sin is what else has been ignored, and the silence exposes the guilty. This building is where the rights of generations of Black people were stolen, not once but twice.
First, when the Confederacy organized itself.
And again — in 1901.
Among all those statues and markers, portraits and plaques, there’s none to document when white south Alabama planters and north Alabama industrialists gathered here in 1901 — when they tried to bring the Confederacy back to life, but this time within the confines of the federal government.
The mementos here tell a story, but it’s counterfeit history. If you want history, you have to find it across the street, at the state Archives.
In the minutes of that convention, you’ll see that it was right up there, on that old House dais, that John B. Knox, a lawyer from Anniston, accepted the chairmanship of the 1901 Alabama Constitutional Convention, where he opened his remarks with a racist joke about “a well authenticated story from Kentucky, of an old darkey” and then explained how they would end what he called “the menace of negro domination.”
It was here they unreconstructed Alabama. It was here that they proudly, explicitly embedded “White Supremacy by Law” — an actual sub-head in the minutes — into Alabama government. It was here they consolidated political power in the Legislature — and away from city and county governments where Black majorities might decide their own affairs. It was here they disenfranchised Black voters for most of the 20th century. It was here they opened the door for Jim Crow, segregation, lynchings, convict leasing and all sorts of oppression.
It was here they drafted the Alabama Constitution of 1901, the foundational document of state government — now amended 977 times and the longest constitution of any state or nation in the world — that still affects and afflicts Alabama. After the birth of the Confederacy, it might be the most consequential act of Alabama history, but good luck finding a trace of it here.
But this place doesn’t need another statue or one more bronze plaque on a wall. It needs ribbons of yellow tape.
This building is a crime scene.
