On Thursday, The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration opened its doors in Montgomery, Alabama. The museum, run by nonprofit organization Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), is located in a warehouse formerly used for the imprisonment of slaves before they were auctioned off in the domestic slave trade.
The current exhibit serves as a reminder of the America's dark and painful, systemically racist past, and is important for this very reason. It is unafraid to make visitors uncomfortable using audiovisual tools that dramatize and walk you through the enslavement of African Americans. People can expect to get up-close and personal with slave pen replicas, read first-person written accounts from the enslaved, and see "extensive research and videography that helps visitors understand the racial terrorism of lynching."
NBC News reports that the 11,000-square-foot space was put together by the EJI with $20 million worth of private donations.
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