I gave a preview last post about what this one would offer - my favorite human rights’ related museums/historical sites in the world.

EJI’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace & Justice in Montgomery, AL, USA

This is my favorite museum and memorial in the world. The truth-telling here is extraordinary. EJI is an organization that has a longstanding reputation for amazing work in the fight against the death penalty and wrongful convictions - working largely in the Deep South. The branch to move from legal representation and public policy to public education makes sense. The last portion of the museum comes directly from EJI’s work with prisoners, many of whom are children.
I have been twice, once in 2020 and once in 2022, both before the third site on the Alabama River was established. Together the memorial and museum tell the story of America’s history from chattel slavery to mass incarceration and honor the lives of enslaved peoples and their descendants. The memorial is a viscerally moving space both in what it memorializes (everyone lynched in the US, by State (some by county, if the numbers of lunchings were that high) and how it is designed - as a spiral from the perspective of being in the tree. Each piece of metal represents the body hanging. It’s a somber place remembering the lives of those lost to white supremacy and hate. It gives name and voice to the victims, even when the names are unknown. There is more, but this is worth a trip to the Deep South. Give yourself plenty of time, and expect to be moved multiple times.

I traveled to Chile in 2022 to start a trip mostly to Argentina. We had only a few days in the capitol, so in looking for things to do and see, I wanted to seek out anything related to the Pinochet era and how the country dealt with that history. In college I took a course studying the fall of democracies to the military (we studied Mexico, Turkey, Iran, and Chile) and it has stayed with me.
This museum has a stunning design, but is in a residential neighborhood - across from a school. There is a large outdoor area as you walk in that (to my memory) is more about the grandeur of the architecture. The museum is inside and not huge - can be done in a few hours. You’re taking through the history of what lead to Pinochet’s rise in power, his reign of terror, and his fall. There are spaces to hear from survivors and the deceased in letters and audio of that time. There are recreations of the torture camps/secret prisons. What really struck me was a large map of where refugees resettled and how many Chileans resettled during this time.

With plantations in the news lately with the burning of the Nottoway Plantation earlier this month, I wanted to highlight a plantation I’ve been to - last summer (2024) - that is decidedly not a plantation where weddings happen. Whitney Plantation is a non-profit organization with a board that consists of descendants of enslaved people and the main purpose of the non-profit is to be an educational and reverential space honoring the lives of the enslaved peoples who lived on that land. There is not a focus on the slave owners or the “big house” - in fact the latter is empty. Upon entering, you receive a lanyard with someone’s name and their story that you carry throughout. There are bronze statues of the lanyard people in the first site you visit - the church where the enslaved people worshiped. We did the guided tour and I highly recommend it. The guide added so much information to the sites there, including a monument with the names of all of the enslaved people who lived on the land. You learn of a great rebellion and the place of enslaved and free people of color in the Civil War. You learn of a connection to a prominent Creole New Orleans family and this plantation.
It is admittedly about an hour drive from New Orleans downtown and lies on the Mississippi in a rural part of Louisiana. It is well worth the drive and our tour took less than three hours.

I went to this museum admittedly soon after college graduation on a larger European trip with friends. I don’t have photos on me of this visit or very clear memories of the museum. What I do remember is it being haunting - like so many of these museums are and frankly should be. The museum is located in a place of previous torture during the Nazi and communist dictatorships, so it is not just the exhibits or information that is powerful and terrible, but the fact of being in the space where these terrible things occurred - that adds another element.

While this museum is not focused on human rights per se or one terrible event in history, I include it here because it is a contrasting piece (speaking of immigration by choice not force or displacement) and does touch on the racism faced by Japanese-Brazilians during WWII. Before coming to the museum in summer of 2024, I knew that Brazil has the highest population of Japanese people in the world outside of Japan. Why, though, I didn’t know. That’s what this museum does a great job in explaining. It’s tucked into Japan town in an unassuming building and the exhibits are on multiple levels of the building. I would recommend two hours for this museum and then walk through Japan town - we got lucky and a summer festival was happening honoring Japanese heritage - as we left the museum and walked to our next destination.

Global Human Rights Sites

La Dolce Vita With a Side of Nostalgia