America’s Black Holocaust Museum celebrates its first year as a successful virtual museum

Written by admin   // February 25, 2013   // 0 Comments

America’s Black Holocaust Museum (www.abhmuseum.org) will celebrate its first year as a successful virtual museum on February 25, 2013. To date, more than 37,000 people from one hundred sixty-eight countries have visited ABHM’s online exhibits.

ABHM’s mission is to increase the public’s awareness and understanding of the magnitude of the Black Holocaust, its ongoing impact on American society, and what can be done about it. It aims to be a safe space for contemplation and discussion.

The original bricks-and-mortar museum was founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1988 by Dr. James Cameron, who survived a lynching as a teenager and became an unsung hero of the civil rights movement. Cameron’s death and insufficient funding forced ABHM to shut its doors in 2008. In 2012, a new nonprofit organization, the Dr. James Cameron Legacy Foundation, resurrected the museum by putting it online and using twenty-first century technologies to tell its stories.

Like its physical predecessor, the virtual museum tells little-known stories in a series of galleries chronicling the holocaust from captivity in Africa and the slaveship voyages through the slavery, Jim Crow, Reconstruction, and civil rights eras, right up to the present. ABHM’s exhibits are made up of interpretive text, still and moving images, original documents, music, works of art, interactive features, and user-generated content. The museum is designed for use by young people and adults in the general public and in educational settings.

For more information, contact Dr. Fran Kaplan, Virtual Museum Coordinator, at dr.fran@abhmuseum.org or 414.445.7500.

Tags:

America's Black Holocaust Museum

awareness

Black Holocaust

celebrate

first

increase

magnitude

mission

virtual museum