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Legacies on Display: Slavery in Museums
Museums are exciting places to see the usable past in action. They bring together objects, people and places to provide interpretation and facilitate discussions on a range of topics, from history to human rights. There is a global tradition of museums representing slavery beginning in the early twentieth century. These museums range from small, local community museums in the UK, that focus on individual abolitionist leaders, to redeveloped slave forts on the West African coast and large national institutions in North America. As well as providing visitors with information about slavery, both historic and modern, museums can also provide evidence as to how societies are thinking about these issues.
This collection showcases museums across the world that house permanent exhibitions relating to slavery and abolition.
Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park
The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park was established in 2003, the 100th anniversary of Tubman's death, in rural Dorchester County. In 2017 the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Centre was officially opened. The visitor centre was a collaborative project between…
Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture
The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture was created out of the passion and activism of businessman Reginald F. Lewis. Lewis rose from humble beginnings to earn a place at Harvard Law School, establish the first African American law firm on Wall Street and…
Harriet Tubman Museum
The Harriet Tubman Museum is a small museum located in Cambridge, Maryland, a few miles from where Harriet Tubman was born. The museum originated as a community organization which was planning a single three-day event honouring Harriet Tubman in 1983. Over the years, the Harriet Tubman Organisation…
Queensland Museum
The Queensland Museum is a museum of natural history, science, human achievement and local interest that was founded by the Queensland Philosophical Society in 1862. Over the last century it has been housed in various sites, namely former colonial administrative buildings, until the local government…
Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira
The Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira is one of New Zealand's oldest museum. Founded in 1852, the museum was formally inaugurated in its current site in 1929. It narrates the story of New Zealand, its place in the Pacific, and its people. The museum is also a war memorial for Auckland…
Museum of Modern Day Slavery
The Museum of Modern Day Slavery opened in 2014. It is managed by Elijah Rising, a prayer gathering that aims to end sex trafficking through prayer, awareness, intervention, and restoration. The museum is a big part of that mission and is housed in a former brothel that Elijah Rising negotiated the…
Museum of Saint Helena
The Museum of Saint Helena originated as a small natural history collection in 1854. Over the last 150 years it has moved three times before being officially opened in its current site in 2002 to mark the 500th anniversary of the island's discovery. It is housed in an eighteenth-century former…
San Diego Museum of Man
The San Diego Museum of Man is an anthropological museum that originated from the 1915 Panama-California Exposition that celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal. Over the last century, the museum has expanded and developed in its original buildings at San Diego's Balboa Park. It took its present…
Mobee Royal Family Orginal Slave Relics Museum
The Mobee Royal Family Original Slave Relics Museum is a small museum housed in a nineteenth century colonial building. It showcases the role of the local 'Chief Mobee' in the enslavement of local Africans during the transatlantic slave trade, as well as the role of his son (and successor) in…
Rokeby Museum
The Rokeby Museum presents a 'nationally significant Underground Railroad story tucked inside a quintessential Vermont experience.' The museum was established in 1961, and covers 100 acres, with ten historic buildings. Originally a prosperous merino wool farm, Rokeby was owned by the Robinson family…
National History Museum
The National History Museum of Mauritius opened in 1948. It is housed in an French colonial villa built in 1772 that was formerly used as a military hospital, a naval museum and the Museum of Historical Souvenirs. It is managed by the Mauritius Museums Council, under the governance of the Ministry…
House of Negritude and Human Rights
The House of Negritude and Human Rights opened in 1971 in the former Champagney town hall. It relocated to its present site in 1995. The museum was founded after local historian René Simonin discovered a document in the Haute-Saône departmental archives. This document is known as 'Article 29' of…
National Museum Afroperuano
The National Museum Afroperuano (or National Museum of Afro-Peruvian History) opened in 2009. Housed in the 'House of Thirteen Coins', in Lima, the museum is dedicated to acquiring, preserving and interpreting objects relating to African history in Peru.
The exhibitions begin by examining the…
Seychelles Natural History Museum
The Seychelles Natural History Museum explores the history of the Seychelles, from the island's geological development to the Second World War. It is located in Victoria, the capital city, next to the main post office. The museum covers botany, zoology, geology and anthropology, as well as military…
African American Museum of Iowa
The African American Museum of Iowa was founded by a small group of members of the Mt. Zion missionary Baptist church in Cedar Rapids in 1993. The museum was closed for a year during flooding, reopening in 2009. It attempts to preserve, exhibit, and teach the African American heritage of Iowa. The…
America's Black Holocaust Museum
The museum was founded in 1984 by Dr James Cameron, a self-taught historian and public speaker. The only known survivor of a lynching, Dr Cameron used his survival experience to provide visitors with a unique view of ‘living history’. Alongside this, he expanded the museum’s exhibits and…
Cape Coast Castle
Cape Coast Castle is one of around forty ‘slave castles’ built by European traders on the coast of West Africa and used to hold enslaved Africans prior to their being transported to the Americas or the Caribbean. The first timber construction on the site was erected in 1653 for the Swedish…
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
The museum was established by Dr. Charles Wright, an obstetrician and gynaecologist who envisioned an institution to preserve Black history after visiting a memorial to Danish World War II heroes in Denmark. It opened in 1965 as Detroit’s first international Afro-American museum. After expansions…
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site
Built on the site of the Black settlement that Rev. Josiah Henson helped found in 1841, Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site preserves the settlement where Henson and his wife Nancy lived. The site is situated within 200 acres and was named after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s popular 1852 antislavery novel…
Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum
The Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum opened in 1997 on the Burkle Estate- an historic house in Memphis. Originally built by a German immigrant, Joseph Burkle, the building is thought to have been part of the Underground Railroad, offering safe harbour to the enslaved on their escape route…