Lynching Memorial and Legacy Museum Opens to the Public

The public is getting its first look at a lynching memorial and museum in Montgomery.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened Thursday. It commemorates 4,400 black people who lost their lives in lynchings and other racial killings between 1877 and 1950. Their names, where known, are engraved on 800 steel rectangles, one for each U.S. county where lynchings occurred.

Also opening in Montgomery is The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.

Launch events include a “Peace and Justice Summit” featuring celebrities and activists such as Ava DuVernay, Marian Wright Edelman and Gloria Steinem.

The summit, museum and memorial are projects of the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery-based legal advocacy group founded by attorney Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson won a MacArthur “genius” award for his human rights work.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)