Ahead of you is the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. This Montgomery museum openly displays the history of slavery and racism in America — including the enslavement of African-Americans, racial lynchings, segregation, and racial bias. It opened on April 26, 2018, and was founded by Montgomery’s Equal Justice Initiative, the non-profit started by Bryan Stevenson to assist in providing legal representation to inmates on death row.
The project received no public funding; the development and construction of the museum and the nearby memorial cost an estimated $20 million raised from private donations and charitable foundations. To mark its opening the Equal Justice Initiative held an opening ceremony and a two-day Summit that included speakers such as Sherrilyn Ifill, the Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Anthony Ray Hinton. As you stand here, you are literally beside a site created as a counterpart to the National Memorial to Peace and Justice, which is dedicated specifically to the memory of the victims of lynching.
Step closer and notice how this museum's purpose connects directly to the nearby National Memorial to Peace and Justice.