This important new museum was created out of a wider campaign to confront the legacy of slavery, lynching and segregation in the US, finds Rebecca Swirsky
In April this year, the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration opened in Montgomery, Alabama. The 335 sq m museum explores the history of racial inequality and its relationship to contemporary issues such as mass incarceration and police brutality. Nearby, set on a six-acre site overlooking the white columned and domed Alabama State Capitol, is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice the nation’s first memorial dedicated to victims of lynching and white supremacy.
Comprising over 800 steel columns, the memorial represents each county in America where a racially motivated lynching has taken place, with the names of the victims inscribed on each.
What were the main challenges in creating and curating the museum?
For example, we worked with Google on our lynching exhibit, HBO was a partner on one of our films, and a group called Local Projects, a New York-based design firm, partnered with us on the warehouse exhibit where you hear the voices of slaves. Individual filmmakers also helped us realise the vision, as did sculptors and artists, including the amazing African-American artist Elizabeth Catlett.
What’s the most innovative aspect of the museum?
There is a lot of technology; the lobby has three video screens; story panels for each era dig deep into a range of issues, including economic consequences; videos are in high definition; and slaves in the form of holograms appear in cage-like pens as they wait to be auctioned. Yet it is the integration between technology, historical narrative and original narratives not previously presented in a cultural space – press accounts of lynching, or content from first person narratives of slavery – that is truly innovative. The museum also houses the nation’s most comprehensive collection of data on lynching.
Did steering groups formed from American prisons and prisoners advise you?
The Equal Justice Initiative was never designed to be a museum or set up to be a museum, so we have been heavily shaped by the incarceration experience. We provide re-entry services, and we were in prisons every day when we were conceptualising this museum, so the first-person perspective of prisoners is very much what you find in the museum. In the mass incarceration exhibit – what we call the fourth era, after segregation – we have letters from clients, people who have written to us over the years begging for help, and by picking up one of eight phones, you can hear a recorded statement from an incarcerated person.
Can you describe the experience of walking through the museum?
It’s very intense. Montgomery is a city created by slavery. You walk into the museum and the first thing you learn is that you are standing on the site of a former building where enslaved people were held. It gives a sobriety and power that would not be achieved elsewhere. There is a video of a child being separated from her parents. Slave narratives can be heard in which people are saying heartbreaking things about their loss and suffering. You walk down a ramp into what looks like a dungeon where you see penned-up ghosts of slave people waiting to be sold at the auction block – witnessing the narratives of these slave people recited by performers wearing chains is visceral.
Why is this museum important to open now?
When I have visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, I’m motivated to say, “Never again”. Today, with one in three black babies expected to go to jail, and too many brown and black people shot by police, we cannot afford to wait any longer in confronting this history.
What do visitors often not anticipate about the museum?
How emotional it is to confront history and to see these narratives. We have stocked the space with Kleenex.
What is important, however, is that if people have a response to this museum, they can also have a mode of expression with which to make a transformation. In the final room, the dialogue space, we support people in registering to vote. People are invited to volunteer with 150 organisations and we have petitions to sign. The ability to act gives people a sense of empowerment. It helps them leave not feeling overwhelmed or burdened by inability.
How do you feel about the museum?
I feel deeply proud about this museum, and I am moved and energised by the strong responses I have seen – quiet reflection or intense conversations about what it means to understand this history. The purpose of both the museum and the memorial is that truth telling can be liberating. It can be empowering, creating ways forward for redemption and reconciliation.
museumandmemorial.eji.org
Main funder Equal Justice Initiative
Creative partners Local Projects; Tim Lewis and TALA; 1220 Exhibits; Molly Crabapple; Orchid Création; Stink Studios; Human Pictures; HBO; Google
In April this year, the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration opened in Montgomery, Alabama. The 335 sq m museum explores the history of racial inequality and its relationship to contemporary issues such as mass incarceration and police brutality. Nearby, set on a six-acre site overlooking the white columned and domed Alabama State Capitol, is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice the nation’s first memorial dedicated to victims of lynching and white supremacy.
Comprising over 800 steel columns, the memorial represents each county in America where a racially motivated lynching has taken place, with the names of the victims inscribed on each.
The museum and memorial were created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) a private non-profit organisation committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the US. EJI was founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a human rights lawyer and recipient of a MacArthur Genius grant, who is now the executive director of the Legacy Museum. EJI raised more than $20m for the museum and memorial from private donations, many of which were from individuals who donated $20, $30, or $100.
The museum is housed in a two-storey brick building on the site of a former warehouse where enslaved black people were imprisoned. It is the physical manifestation of a decade’s worth of research that EJI has been conducting into the history of racial injustice.What were the main challenges in creating and curating the museum?
Bryan Stevenson: Our initial partners wanted to push us towards the more conventional direction of a civil rights museum, but we knew that a celebratory narrative would undermine our deep engagement with the issues. In the end, we wrote the copy and scripts, and worked with different companies for different parts of the museum.
What’s the most innovative aspect of the museum?
There is a lot of technology; the lobby has three video screens; story panels for each era dig deep into a range of issues, including economic consequences; videos are in high definition; and slaves in the form of holograms appear in cage-like pens as they wait to be auctioned. Yet it is the integration between technology, historical narrative and original narratives not previously presented in a cultural space – press accounts of lynching, or content from first person narratives of slavery – that is truly innovative. The museum also houses the nation’s most comprehensive collection of data on lynching.
Did steering groups formed from American prisons and prisoners advise you?
The Equal Justice Initiative was never designed to be a museum or set up to be a museum, so we have been heavily shaped by the incarceration experience. We provide re-entry services, and we were in prisons every day when we were conceptualising this museum, so the first-person perspective of prisoners is very much what you find in the museum. In the mass incarceration exhibit – what we call the fourth era, after segregation – we have letters from clients, people who have written to us over the years begging for help, and by picking up one of eight phones, you can hear a recorded statement from an incarcerated person.
Can you describe the experience of walking through the museum?
It’s very intense. Montgomery is a city created by slavery. You walk into the museum and the first thing you learn is that you are standing on the site of a former building where enslaved people were held. It gives a sobriety and power that would not be achieved elsewhere. There is a video of a child being separated from her parents. Slave narratives can be heard in which people are saying heartbreaking things about their loss and suffering. You walk down a ramp into what looks like a dungeon where you see penned-up ghosts of slave people waiting to be sold at the auction block – witnessing the narratives of these slave people recited by performers wearing chains is visceral.
From there you walk into a main area where you see history laid out, the narrative timeline linking slavery, lynching, segregation, mass incarceration. A theatre with a video and recordings of enslaved people who talk about what it was like to be enslaved accompany each exhibit. Towards the end of the journey, the museum has a reflection space and a dialogue space.
Why is this museum important to open now?
When I have visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, I’m motivated to say, “Never again”. Today, with one in three black babies expected to go to jail, and too many brown and black people shot by police, we cannot afford to wait any longer in confronting this history.
What do visitors often not anticipate about the museum?
How emotional it is to confront history and to see these narratives. We have stocked the space with Kleenex.
What is important, however, is that if people have a response to this museum, they can also have a mode of expression with which to make a transformation. In the final room, the dialogue space, we support people in registering to vote. People are invited to volunteer with 150 organisations and we have petitions to sign. The ability to act gives people a sense of empowerment. It helps them leave not feeling overwhelmed or burdened by inability.
How do you feel about the museum?
I feel deeply proud about this museum, and I am moved and energised by the strong responses I have seen – quiet reflection or intense conversations about what it means to understand this history. The purpose of both the museum and the memorial is that truth telling can be liberating. It can be empowering, creating ways forward for redemption and reconciliation.
Rebecca Swirsky is a freelance writer
Project data
Cost UndisclosedMain funder Equal Justice Initiative
Creative partners Local Projects; Tim Lewis and TALA; 1220 Exhibits; Molly Crabapple; Orchid Création; Stink Studios; Human Pictures; HBO; Google
Admission $8 Adult; $6 Concessions/students; Children aged six and under, free
