America's Black Holocaust Museum

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America's Black Holocaust Museum located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was the only memorial dedicated specifically to the victims of the enslavement of Africans in the United States. It was founded by James Cameron, America's last living survivor of a lynching.

Cameron died in 2006; in 2008, the museum's board of directors announced that the museum would be closed temporarily because of financial problems.^[1][2] It has not re-opened since.

After surviving a lynching attempt and prison, starting at age 16, James Cameron became determined to change his life. He got an education, worked hard, and studied all his life about slavery and the African-American experience in the United States. He worked in civil rights, wrote independent articles, and collected materials having to do with African-American history. After retirement, James Cameron and his wife visited Yad VaShem in Israel. He thought that the focus on the personal history of individuals and their stories, rather than on numbers and processes, led to a better understanding of the reality of the Holocaust. Then living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1988 Cameron founded the museum, with the help of philanthropist Daniel Bader. He had been collecting materials on the African-American experience in the US for many years.

America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM) existed to educate the public of injustices suffered by people of African American heritage, while providing visitors with an opportunity to rethink their assumptions about race and racism.

While there is also a Black Holocaust memorial in Savannah, Georgia, the ABHM served as a center for education and scholarship related to the Black Holocaust and as a non-threatening forum for sharing thoughts about race and racism in America.

Exposing visitors to historical aspects of African American cultural identity was achieved through educational exhibits, special programming, and guided tours related to six distinct historic eras:

• Before Captivity in Africa
• The Middle Passage
• Slavery in the Americas
• Reconstruction era of the United States
• Civil Rights
• Modern Day Injustices

ABHM welcomed visitors of all races and backgrounds, and encouraged community understanding of the nation’s history of racism, prejudice, social change and cross-cultural understanding.

• List of museums focused on African Americans

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