I had never heard of Bryan Stevenson.

I heard his name for the first time in Montgomery, Ala., just last month. There, on top of a hill, sits the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the “lynching memorial,” locals call it. It opened last spring. It’s a somber site. Some 800 rust-colored steel rectangles, the size and shape of coffins, bear the names of more than 4,000 African-American men, women, and children who were lynched from 1877 all the way up to 1950 simply because of the color of their skin. The monuments hang lynched, too, suspended from a ceiling. They are the history I was never taught in school.