With all the talk about awards, this one is much deserved.
The Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace & Justice is receiving the Attraction of the Year Award from the Alabama Tourism Department according to AL.com.
The memorial museum, created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), honors the lives of lynching victims in the United States through sculptures, video, interactive media and exhibits. In just over a year, the museum, which tells the story of racial terror and segregation, has already garnered more than 400,000 visitors from across the globe.
Last year, the EJI and Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce Convention & Visitors Bureau also won the 2018 Tourism Partnership Award. The EJI is constantly working to expand its efforts and the memorial museum. There are plans to include a gift shop and cafe as well as expand parking and shuttle services for visitors. There are also several initiatives in the works including the Community Remembrance Project, which honors victims of lynching by collecting soil from lynching sites to be placed in local exhibits or the national museum, and erects historical markers to honor those sites.
The latest Community Remembrance Project efforts are happening in Denton County, Texas. A group of volunteers have partnered with the local NAACP to host a ceremony to honor Denton County’s lynching victims, many of whom went undocumented, including two men who disappeared from the Pilot Point jail on December 14, 1922 and were never seen or heard from again.
The EJI encourages more communities to participate in their soil collection and historical markers projects to “commemorate and recognize the traumatic era of lynching [and] make our history of racial injustice more visible across the American landscape.”
The Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace & Justice is located in Montgomery, Alabama and is open to the public.