The Legacy Museum
Transforming a former slave warehouse into a site of truth and reconciliation.
Overview
The United States has a history it often refuses to see. Working with the Equal Justice Initiative and its founder Bryan Stevenson, we helped launch the original Legacy Museum (2018–2021), designed to break that silence. Located on the site of a former slave warehouse in Montgomery, Alabama, this foundational exhibition established a single, devastating narrative arc—demonstrating how the ideology of white supremacy has shapeshifted from chattel slavery to lynching, to Jim Crow segregation, and finally, to the modern crisis of mass incarceration.
Services
Master Planning, Exhibit Design, Media Design
“No one can recover from injustice and oppression without truth and reconciliation.”
The Details
For this inaugural version of the museum, the location itself was the primary artifact. Visitors stood on ground where enslaved people were once imprisoned, grounding the digital media in physical reality. We worked to translate EJI's rigorous research into immersive exhibits—including first-person accounts from incarcerated men and women and data visualizations of the domestic slave trade. This work helped set the tone for a national conversation, forcing a confrontation with the "narrative of racial difference" and calling for the truth necessary to heal the nation’s soul.
