HARI SREENIVASAN:

The plan is to commemorate victims of racially motivated lynchings with a memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.

The design calls for some 800 columns, which, upon closer viewing, reveal themselves to be suspended from above in a way that mimics a hanging. Each will bear the names of lynching victims, over 4,000 in all, as well as the date and location of their deaths.

A companion courtyard will hold duplicate columns which will be moved to the county of the lynchings each commemorates, once that local community accepts it.

A recent $10 million donation from sibling philanthropists Pat and Jon Stryker brings the project closer to its planned 2018 opening.

For more on all this, we turn to Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, which created the concept and is overseeing its completion.

Bryan, thanks for being with us.

First, why do we need a memorial like this?