Oprah Winfrey gets first look inside memorial to the victims of lynching

Oprah Winfrey gets first look inside memorial to the victims of lynching

The new memorial is dedicated to the thousands of victims of lynching that took place over a 70-year period following the Civil War 

Oprah Winfrey brings 60 Minutes cameras into a new memorial dedicated to the thousands of victims of lynching that took place over a 70-year period following the Civil War. It will be the first time the public sees the inside of the structure and its 805 steel markers, each bearing the names of people murdered – often with thousands of onlookers amid a picnic-like atmosphere. Her report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, April 8 at 7:00 p.m., ET/PT on CBS.

Each marker represents a state county and contains the names of victims of documented lynching from that area. The memorial takes up six acres in the heart of Montgomery, Alabama, perhaps the best known city in the struggle for civil rights. Alabama was also the scene of 361 documented lynchings.

 Among the more than 4,300 cases of lynching documented by Stevenson and his team was the story of Jesse Washington, a black man accused of a crime in Waco, Texas. One team member, criminal defense attorney Sia Sanneh, found a newspaper account of Washington's murder. She tells Winfrey it described a crowd of 15,000, many "dressed in their Sunday best."