The Legacy Museum - Where the Story Begins

Photo: Soniakapadia, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

A stop on Montgomery: Legacy and Civil Rights Road, a free self-guided tour.

You are standing outside The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, created by the Equal Justice Initiative, the Montgomery legal nonprofit founded by attorney Bryan Stevenson to defend people on death row. EJI built it on ground where enslaved Black people were once held in warehouses, a short walk from the river landing and the auction square downtown.

The museum opened in 2018 and moved into this 47,000-square-foot building in 2021. Inside, the galleries run through the whole arc of this tour: the domestic slave trade, Reconstruction, the era of racial terror, Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights years, and finally mass incarceration, where the voices of people in prison carry the story into the present.

Entry is by timed ticket. One general admission pass covers the museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, and free shuttles link all three. Allow two hours here, and check legacysites.eji.org for current hours and prices.

Getting here: The tour starts here at 400 North Court Street, a few blocks north of downtown; EJI offers free parking at the museum.

Did you know?: The first Legacy Museum, opened in 2018, filled about 11,000 square feet; the building you see now is more than four times as large.

Photo op: Cross North Court Street to fit the museum's entrance and sign in one frame, and follow the posted photography rules once you are inside.

More on Wikipedia: The Legacy Museum · Equal Justice Initiative · Bryan Stevenson

The Legacy Museum - Where the Story Begins

Stops on this tour