The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is a new museum that opened on April 26 in Montgomery, Alabama.

According to Eji.org “the 11,000-square-foot museum was built on the site of a former warehouse where enslaved black people were imprisoned, and is located midway between a historic slave market and the main river dock and train station where tens of thousands of enslaved people were trafficked during the height of the domestic slave trade.”

The memorial portion of the museum, according to Eji.org, is “the first memorial dedicated to the legacy of black people… and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence.” The memorial will include over 800 weathering steel monuments each one representing a county in America where lynchings took place.

The Equal Justice Initiative was founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson a public interest lawyer who, according to the website, is dedicated “to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned.” The equal justice initiative “believes that publicly confronting the truth about our history is the first step towards recovery and reconciliation.

Many people said this memorial provides a personal feel to American history.

Junior Mesha Hester said she feels that “since it is important of history and it is important of all parts of history should be discussed.” This comment has relation to the goal of the Equal Justice Initiative.

Senior Raihan Rabbi said he agrees that it is important to provide such harsh parts of history on display saying “because then people would not get the same full effect of what actually happened.”