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He survived a lynching and left a legacy
By Tom Adkinson
March 4, 2022
American Black Holocaust Museum gallery. Image by Visit Milwaukee |
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin – James H. Cameron Jr. missed his appointment with death – the rope was around his neck for a lynching that claimed the lives of two other Black teenagers when he was saved – and Cameron recounted that gruesome story for the rest of his life.
The lynching was in Marion, Indiana, in 1930, and Cameron died 76 years later in 2006. In those 76 years, Cameron’s event-filled life included creating the American Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee. It began in a storefront in 1988 and moved to its own building in 1992.
American Black Holocaust Museum. Image by Visit Milwaukee |
Cameron’s death and the nation’s 2008 economic downturn forced the museum to give up its building, but like Cameron, the museum found a way to survive – first as a comprehensive website and now as a physical museum undergirded by an anonymous $10 million grant.
Seven galleries paint a powerful story of the Black experience in America. They begin with life in Africa, move on to the slave trade and enslavement, and continue through Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement. The final gallery is provocatively titled “NOW: Free at Last?”
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