Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration

The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration displays the history of slavery and racism in America. This history includes the enslavement of African-Americans, racial lynchings, segregation, and racial bias.

The “Equal Justice Initiative” founded the museum. It is a counterpart to the National Memorial to Peace and Justice, which is dedicated to the memory of the victims of lynching.

The museum displays a collection of soil from lynching sites across the United States. Researchers have documented about 4400 “racial terror lynchings” in the post-Reconstruction era between 1877 and 1950.

Most “lynchings” took place in the decades just before and after the turn of the 20th century.

Its exhibits include oral history, archival materials, and interactive technology to show the horror and terror of enslavement, lynchings, and legalized racial segregation in America.

The museum leads the visitor from slavery to racial oppression in its many forms, including terror lynching and mass incarceration of minorities.

Slavery Evolved Wall – The Legacy Museum – From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration

Highlights of The Legacy Museum

Artwork by Hank Willis Thomas, Glenn Ligon, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Titus Kaphar, and Sanford Biggers
Photographs of African-Americans picking cotton – depicting inmates from 1960s
Slave replicas, which model what it was like to be an imprisoned slave awaiting sale at the auction block
First-person accounts of slavery and auctioning through narration and voice-overs
Exhibits and Display on slavery
A collection of soil from lynching sites across the United States