To the President of the United States,
The White House, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. President,

I propose the creation of a national monument to the memory of the estimated ten-thousand American men, women and children who have fallen victim to the passion of the mob and the absence of the rule of law. In this, I propose a monument that will include all, but especially attend those who suffered the long dark days of the routine practice of lynching that has stained our great history and was motivated by the basest expressions of racial hatred, intolerance, greed and social control.

I have been inspired to suggest this undertaking after viewing a work by the great American sculptor, Isamu Noguchi. In his 1934 statue of a lynched man, titled "Death", the work so enobled its subject victim at the same time it exposed the tragedy of its theme that I could not help but realize this wound still lies deep in the American psyche and calls for repair. As a Japanese-American, Mr. Noguchi himself suffered numerous forms of intolerance, not least the racial slurs and slander which his first exhibition of the work at the Rose Marie Harriman Galleries in 1935 called forth from a critic with devastating impact.

I believe, Mr. President, it would be fitting in this first year of the new millennia, that we begin by putting behind us this grim reminder of an age when people succumbed to such expressions of intolerance and violent policy. But, I think we can only do so if we forthrightly acknowledge the victims and their families, many of whom will forever remain nameless, of this cruel moment of shame. Lynching is a wound which still cries to be healed. I propose our government help us to do so by soliciting a fitting national monument and grounds that will at last give this invisible group of America's 'disappeared' a visible sign of acknowledgement and a place where their memory may come home to rest.

Most Sincerely,

Red Slider, poet.