LOUISVILLE, Ky. — For more than 20 years, Highland Baptist Church has placed white crosses in its front lawn. The crosses can be seen at the corner of Grinstead Drive and Cherokee Road.
"Each cross marks a murder that happened in the city of Louisville over the course of the last year," Rev. Lauren Jones Mayfield, associate pastor of young adults and mission at Highland Baptist, said. "We wanted some way to respond, some way to say 'hey we see what's going on, we're not content with it.'"
According to the latest update from the Louisville Metro Police Department, there have been 91 homicides so far in 2019. Last year, there were 81.
"I hope that as people drive by and they see the crosses on the lawn that they will know that this is intentionally a cemetery like feel," Jones Mayfield said. "I hope it catches their attention and helps them ask the questions that we are asking of what are those crosses and why are they there?"
Missy Smith, a co-leader of Highland Baptist's anti-racism team, said the crosses are placed on the lawn each December on the second Sunday of advent during Peace Sunday.
"There are members of our congregation who asked to place specific crosses because they had students who had been lost," Smith said. "There's something so haunting and beautiful when you're standing inside reading the names, and hearing the names read, to hear the hammering on the front lawn, that I believe, and you can see the emotion in the congregation's faces that they can feel the weight of what we're doing."
Both Smith and Jones Mayfield said the crosses are meant to visualize more than just a number.
"When you see the number visualized so easily and in this visual representation, it stops being just a number," Jones Mayfield said. "When you realize there's a name and an age and a family with each cross, it comes to life in ways that should provoke us and make us uncomfortable and hopefully spur us to action in some way."
"These have ages. These are young people, old people, people whose families now for the first year are mourning without them," Smith said.
Each winter, the church leaves space on the lawn in case there are more victims. They will continue to place a cross for each one. Smith said 2019 has seen a lower number than in years past.
"I think that there is a temptation to be hopeful when you see the numbers dip, but the number is not yet zero," she said. "There is still work to be done, so even when we see a drop in a number, we have to remember it's still way too many."
Both Smith and Jones Mayfield also said the crosses serve as a reminder of their effort to shine a light on homicides, and the underlying causes of them.
"Just because we have a cross in the lawn doesn't mean that all of a sudden that we as a predominantly white, middle class, educated, privileged congregation just get to wash our hands of the crime and that trauma and the inconsistencies that are at play across our city," Jones Mayfield said.
"We feel very strongly that while each cross, each murder and each death is very individual, it's also very systemic," Smith said. "We feel like we work as a church and as a group to understand the systemic underlying issues."
Highland Baptist plans to continue putting up the crosses every year.
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