The Legacy Museum facts for kids
The lobby of The Legacy Museum
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| Established | April 26, 2018 |
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| Location | Montgomery, Alabama |
| Founder | Equal Justice Initiative |
The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is a museum in Montgomery, Alabama. It tells the story of Black people in America, from the time of slavery to the present day.
The museum explores the history of slavery, the violence of racial lynchings, and the unfairness of segregation and racism. It shows how these parts of history are connected to problems in the justice system today.
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Creating the Museum
The Legacy Museum opened on April 26, 2018. It was created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a group that helps people who have been treated unfairly by the law. The EJI was started by a lawyer named Bryan Stevenson.
The museum was built along with the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The memorial honors the thousands of Black people who were victims of lynching. The museum and memorial were paid for by donations from people and groups who believed in the project.
To celebrate the opening, the EJI held a special event. Speakers included civil rights leaders and people like Anthony Ray Hinton. Mr. Hinton was helped by the EJI and proven innocent after spending 30 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
A New, Bigger Museum
On October 1, 2021, the museum moved to a new, much larger building. This new location is very important because it is on the site of a former warehouse where enslaved people were once held.
The new museum is about five times bigger than the old one. This allows more people to visit and learn. To make it easier for everyone to come, the EJI made tickets only $5.00 to see both the museum and the nearby memorial.
In 2022, the EJI also opened the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. This 17-acre park is located along the Alabama River. It uses art and historic objects to tell the story of the river, where many enslaved people were brought into the state by boat.
What's Inside the Museum?
The museum takes visitors on a journey through American history. It uses modern technology, historical research, and powerful art to tell its story. The main sections cover:
- Slavery
- The time after the Civil War, called Reconstruction
- Lynching and racial terror
- The Jim Crow era of segregation
- The Civil Rights Movement
- Modern-day injustice and mass incarceration (the problem of too many people being sent to prison)
Interactive Exhibits
The museum wants visitors to understand what it was like to live through these times. It uses technology to show the horror of slavery and racial violence.
- Visitors can see models of what it was like for enslaved people waiting to be sold.
- You can listen to recordings of people telling their own stories from the time of slavery.
- One powerful display is a collection of jars filled with soil from places where lynchings happened.
- There are interactive exhibits, like a replica of a voting station. It shows the impossible tests, like guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar, that Black Americans were forced to take to be allowed to vote.
- Another exhibit lets you sit in a booth like one in a prison and hear the stories of people who are incarcerated today.
Connecting Past and Present
The museum shows how the past still affects the present. For example, one exhibit has photos of Black men picking cotton. At first, you might think the photos are from the time of slavery. But they are actually pictures of prisoners from the 1960s.
This shows how the unfair treatment of Black people has changed over the years but has not gone away. The museum tells a story of an ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.
Art and Hope
The last part of the museum is an art gallery. It features work by famous Black artists like Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Hank Willis Thomas, and Titus Kaphar. Their art helps to explore the themes of the museum.
Before the art gallery, there is a large room filled with pictures of people who fought against racial injustice. This room honors the activists, leaders, and ordinary people who worked to make America a better and fairer country.
Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the EJI, said he hopes the museum helps people learn the parts of American history that are not always taught in school.
See also
In Spanish: Museo del Legado para niños
- List of museums focused on African Americans
- Topography of Terror: a museum in Berlin, Germany, that teaches about the victims of the Nazi regime
