Civil rights birthplace site of museum and memorial

SANDUSKY — The organization behind the efforts to preserve the history of lynchings has opened a new memorial and museum in Montgomery, Ala.The Equal Justice Initiative was founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a public interest lawyer and author.But the organization's National Memorial for Peace and Justice (also known sometimes as the "National Lynching Memorial") opened in Montgomery, Ala, just last year on April 26, 2018. The EJI's Legacy Museum, a separate institution, opened nearby on the same day.The two are open daily except for Tuesdays. They are located 0.7 miles apart, and when they are open, a shuttle runs between them."The Legacy Museum is an indoor narrative museum with audio, exhibits, art, videos and comprehensive content about the legacy of enslavement through contemporary issues of mass incarceration," the EJI's website explains."The National Memorial is an outdoor memorial situated on a 6-acre space where visitors walk a path through our history of racial injustice," it says.The New York Times, covering the new museum and memorial, noted that Montgomery is considered the birthplace of the civil rights movement in America and reported the two institutions have boosted tourism to the city. Montgomery is where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, sparking a protest over segregation that helped launch the career of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Jars of soil collected from lynching sites across the U.S. and displayed at the Legacy Museum.