Perhaps as a primer in advance of a permanent memorial to honor the more than 4,000 known victims of lynching across the U.S., the Equal Justice Initiative, led by the indomitable legal activist Bryan Stevenson, released a short but powerful video, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror.”

The five-minute short is narrated by Stevenson and illustrated by acclaimed graphic artist Molly Crabapple, who recently partnered with rapper Jay Z to explain why the so-called drug wars did nothing more than lead to the mass incarceration of Black and brown people in the U.S. (“The War on Drugs Is An Epic Fail”).

The video unflinchingly explores America’s brutal history of lynching and provides a powerful history lesson, using individual stories that show, despite “emancipation,” thousands of African-Americans were brutally murdered in this country in the name of the White supremacist status quo. ...