Photograph by Robert Rausch/The New York Times/Redux
As a destination, Montgomery is a journey in contrasts. The Alabama capital is both a proud epicenter of the mid-20th-century civil rights movement and a landscape curiously steeped in Confederate memory. Here, history isn’t merely preserved; it is powerfully experienced.
The Legacy Sites loom large in a built environment that embraces collective memory and thus helps shape who we are—and what we can become. Created by the Equal Justice Initiative under the leadership of Bryan Stevenson, the sites include the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, each offering a soul-stirring, self-guided exploration of history, resilience, and progress.
This immersive experience traverses the harrowing history of slavery, lynching, and segregation through the fight for civil rights and into the present-day scourge of mass incarceration. Unfolding at a contemplative pace, the sojourn avoids flattening the Black experience as one of only suffering: It celebrates excellence, ingenuity, and creativity in the face of policies, laws, and social norms that conspire to thwart progress. Together, these sites represent a physical and emotional reckoning with the United States’ past, illustrating how it continues to shape our future.
Photograph by Equal Justice Initiative ∕ Human Pictures
Photograph by Equal Justice Initiative ∕ Human Pictures
The Legacy Museum (400 North Court Street) story starts with the transatlantic slave trade. Deft use of technology underscores the torment of humans trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to the New World. One heartbreaking exhibit on the domestic slave trade uses motion-activated holograms of adults and children sharing hauntingly personal stories of being sold in the Deep South.
Exhibits skillfully deploy timelines, art, video, audio, and other technologies. In gallery after gallery, the intentionality of systemic racism and the drumbeat of imposed Black racial inferiority are on display. But so are examples of African Americans’ embrace of what historian Dr. Daina Ramey Berry calls “soul value,” an inherent sense of self-worth that enslaved people possessed as a kind of spiritual resilience.
One particularly poignant exhibit features jars of soil collected from sites around the country where more than 4,400 Black people were lynched in acts of racial terror between 1877 and 1950. This prepares visitors for the journey to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (417 Caroline Street), also known as the National Lynching Memorial. The six-acre site honors those murdered for simply existing in Black bodies. More than 800 Corten steel monuments represent each county where a racial terror lynching occurred.
Photograph by Equal Justice Initiative ∕ Human Pictures
Photograph by Equal Justice Initiative ∕ Human Pictures
A 20-minute boat ride along the Alabama River to the 17-acre Freedom Monument Sculpture Park (831 Walker Street) reveals artifacts, artworks, and stories of the enslaved. Brick House, artist Simone Leigh’s 16-foot-tall bronze bust of a Black woman, greets visitors at the entrance. Look for Nikesha Breeze’s 108 Death Masks: A Communal Prayer for Peace and Justice, a large-scale ceramic tribute to millions of lives lost during enslavement, and the 43-foot-tall, 155-foot-long National Monument to Freedom.
Be sure to visit artist Michelle Browder’s powerful Mothers of Gynecology Monument (17 Mildred Street). Towering 15 feet tall, this striking collection of metal statues is adorned with Adinkra symbols, each carrying deep cultural and spiritual significance. The monument honors Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey—three enslaved teenagers who endured unimaginable suffering as subjects of experimental surgeries by Dr. J. Marion Sims, often lauded as the “father of gynecology.”
In a striking contradiction to a statue of Sims that stands at the State Capitol, this monument serves as a profound counternarrative, acknowledging the resilience, sacrifice, and unrecognized medical contributions of these teens.
These powerful landmarks are more than educational; they are a call to action. They invite visitors to confront the legacy of racial injustice and imagine a more equitable future.
Where to stay
The rooftop restaurant of Trilogy Hotel Montgomery, Autograph Collection (116 Coosa Street) has a direct view of the Legacy Museum site across the street, which lights up at night. That wedge-shaped brick building just next door is Springhill Suites Montgomery Downtown (152 Coosa Street).
Where to eat
Savor authentic Southern flavors at Pannie-George’s Kitchen inside the Legacy Museum, or enjoy classic barbecue at Dreamland Bar-B-Que (12 West Jefferson Street).
Back to Must-Do South.
This article appears in our March 2025 issue.
