All your dreams are made of strawberry lemonade

Mysterious lake, Autumn or winter? & Morning at the lake by Daniel Řeřicha

There are two types of people in this world. The people who radiate confidence and naturally excel at life, and the people who hope all those people die in a big explosion.

A Curved Library Reflected by the Floors Like Water

Architecture firm XL-Muse has completed ‘Yangzhou Zhongshuge’, a library located in Zhen Yuan, China. the concept was based on the idea of water and how it is the cradle and breeding ground of the Yngzhou culture. Another important element was the arch bridge—an indispensable traditional element used as a guiding factor of commerce, which will represent in the bookstore the connection between human and books throughout history. As visitors walk in, they are welcomed by the arched walls which turn into ceilings that contain the books. the use of a black mirrored glass as floors reflects the bookshelves while giving a feeling of water.

Check out the design by XL-Muse of another magical bookstore: Hangzhou Zhongshuge.

Today, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, his statue is down on Broad Street, Gadsden. Those types of things have an impact on you, generation after generation. Dealing with the same issues, it breeds white supremacy. There is a silent supremacy. They don’t have to do anything or say anything, it has already done its job. —Vanessa Croft

As a child growing up in Alabama, Vanessa Croft often wondered why her Uncle Fred never came south to visit the family, like her other aunts and uncles did. It wasn’t until her dad shared with her the history of Fred’s journey from Alabama to New York in the 1930s that she finally understood. 

One day in the mid-1930s, a group of white men came to the Croft family’s East Gadsden, Alabama, home. Fred Croft was fifteen years old. One of the white men told Fred’s father, Thomas Croft, Sr., that Fred had pushed his daughter off the back porch and he wanted to see the boy about it. Fred was working in town, and the white men left with plans to return. Thomas Croft hurried to find his son and sent him away to protect him from being lynched. That fear was rooted in the experience of racial terrorism; years earlier, Bunk Richardson was lynched in Gadsden and his body was left hanging from the Coosa River train bridge for the entire African American community to see.

Fred Croft never moved back to Alabama after his near-lynching. His story left a lasting impression on Ms. Croft. “The racial terror has been embedded into you,” she shared. “And that’s the intention of any terrorist act, to invoke fear into a community.”

Click here to hear her story, and explore The Legacy of Lynching at the Brooklyn Museum now through September 3.