Exploring Slavery, Segregation & Racial Terrorism In America - The Legacy Sites, Montgomery, AL

This blog post covers three different spaces in Montgomery, Alabama that deal with slavery, segregation, and racial terrorism in America.

1. The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is an 11,000-square-foot museum established by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) and contains more data on racial lynchings than anywhere else in the U.S. as well as previously unseen information on the domestic slave trade. The location of the Museum was once the site where enslaved people were warehoused before being sold. Unfortunately, the museum does not allow interior photography.

There are many powerful exhibits, including one that features heads on the beach to represent the two million Black people who died at sea while being transported to the United States to be sold. Another exhibit displays a wall of jars containing soil from lynching sites, some labeled with names, dates, and locations. Replicas of slave pens are also on display, with electronic projections of figures calling out from cells—cuts to the heart. Additionally, there is an exhibit related to the Freedom Rides, one of the most violent yet successful protests of the modern civil rights movement. The Freedom Riders traveled to important cities from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, enduring violence when their bus was burned by Klan terrorists, nearly killing the riders.

2. National Memorial for Peace and Justice is the nation's first comprehensive memorial dedicated to the legacy of Black Americans who were enslaved, terrorized by lynching, humiliated by racial segregation, and unjustly presumed guilty and dangerous. More than 4,400 Black people, killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950, are remembered here.

3. Freedom Monument Sculpture Park is a 17-acre site located along the very river where tens of thousands of enslaved people were trafficked. The park features breathtaking art and original artifacts, offering a unique and moving insight into the lives of enslaved people. Photography is only permitted for certain sculptures at this site.

This is what caught my eye; I hope you enjoy!

A Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sculptures across the street from the Legacy Museum in Legacy Plaza.

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This sculpture represents the foot soldiers who march and fought for Black citizens’ rights during the Civil Rights movement in Alabama. This is also in Legacy Plaza.

The front facade of the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarcaration. Unfortunately, the museum does not allow photography.

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In the Legacy Museum Courtyard.

May we never forget all those who suffered and died because they asserted the basic human right to be free

These sculptures are all in the 6-acre National Memorial for Peace and Justice. You cannot visit here and not be moved. This memorial highlights the violence fueled by hatred and racism.

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Rise Up sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas.

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The life-size sculpture Guided By Justice by Dana King.

This is a sculpture dramatizing local residents advocating to remember the forgotten lynching stories.

This is in the Community Remembrance section. As testimony to the power of the memorial, since its opening nearly 50 markers have been erected in 20 states, recounting local lynchings. Steel replicas of these markers are on display.

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The next series of images are of 800 corten steel monuments, one for each county in the US that performed lynching(s). The names of the radical terror lynching victims (with dates) are engraved on each.

The sculptures at the entrance are positioned on the ground, but as you move through the memorial, the path descends, and the sculptures shift to hanging. I felt this progression symbolized the gradual process of raising the victim during a lynching.

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A sculpture of Harriet Tubman outside the visitors center at Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. Photography was limited to only a few sculptures according to park administration..

Sculptures inside the Freedom Memorial Sculpture Park facing a wall that displays 122,000 surnames of enslaved people emancipated after the Civil War.

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The sculpture garden is on the spot where boats would land bringing black people to the railroad cars nearby for transport.

What you should know:

• The museum has three different sites and offers a shuttle between them which is included in admission.

• You can travel between sites in your own car, parking is available at all sites.

• There is a boat ride included with admission.

• There are walking trails at the sculpture gardens.

• Admission can be purchased on-line or in person.

• Check website for days and hours of operation.

• All sites are self-guided.

• You could spend a minimum of three hours to an entire day exploring at all three sites.

Locations: The Legacy Museum, 400 N Court St, Montgomery, AL 36104

National Memorial for Peace and Justice 417 Caroline St, Montgomery, AL 36104

Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, 831 Walker St, Montgomery, AL 36104

For more information: The Legacy Museum 

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