Photo by Tom Jenz
America's Black Holocaust Museum
He could feel the lynch knot tightening around his neck. He could see his two Black companions dangling from trees, lynched and dead. He found himself surrounded by thousands of whites yelling for blood. He prayed, “Lord, forgive me my sins!” Suddenly, a woman yelled, “Take this boy back. He had nothing to do with raping or killing.” The time was 1930, a steaming August night on the courthouse lawn in Marion, Indiana. A murder had taken place, Black on white. James Cameron was only 16, his life suddenly still ahead of him.
Cameron spent the next five years in prison. For the rest of his life, he maintained his faith in the moral framework of “liberty and justice for all” entrenched in America’s founding documents. He wrote about his experience in his memoir, A Time of Terror, an affecting story of anger and courage, forgiveness and redemption.
Generations later, James Cameron, a father of five, came to Milwaukee where in 1988 he founded America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM), which explored neglected stories of the Black experience from pre-captivity to the present day. Two years after Cameron’s death in 2006, the museum closed. In 2022, it was revived in Bronzeville.
ABHM tells the story of African Americans from the time before they were enslaved in 1619 through the present, using dramatic photographs, contemplative artwork, and 3,700 pages of content, covering 500 years of history in a 4,000-foot space. The permanent exhibition follows the harmful legacies of slavery and Jim Crow in America and promotes racial repair, reconciliation and healing. Over the last 12 years, the museum website has been visited by hundreds of thousands of people from over 200 countries.
Scholar Fran Kaplan, Marquette professor Rob Smith, activist Reggie Jackson and the current executive director, Brad Pruitt, took the new museum from an idea to a reality. Pruitt describes the museum as “one of Milwaukee’s living rooms where the community can gather, learn and exchange information.”
Not long ago, I met Pruitt at the museum, and we conversed.
Tell me about your background, upbringing, your parents, community, and your schooling.
That is an eclectic narrative. Born and partially raised in Milwaukee in many neighborhoods, but my family moved around, Minneapolis, Dallas, Chicago, so I went to many different schools, varied spaces and places. These were diverse environments, and I learned the context of American lives, ethnic backgrounds, racial issues, and socio-economic class. I learned about preconceptions versus reality. It was challenging for me to be accepted by other kids. But that experience resulted in one of my greatest assets, the ability to acclimate to environments and connect with people.
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Most Americans grow up in one area and have similar reference points. Way different for you. What high school did you attend?
In Milwaukee, Rufus King and Pius, but I graduated from Oak Park High School in Chicago.
Your career has been in the arts, mainly filmmaking. When did you get interested in film?
The arts were my first love. As a child, I used to draw and take pictures. But my first paying job was at the Chicago Board of Trade as a runner on the floor and then an assistant trader. I got a look at how the economic infrastructure works and also at how people behave.
How did you transition from the hectic investment world into the art world?
I went to Atlanta where some of my friends were working on films, videos, arts and music. But my family was in Milwaukee. Eventually, I came back here to help develop the arts and culture scene. I was part of a group of young artists who tried to create an artist consortium because we needed a support structure we could not afford individually. We could not get that going, but I continued on with projects like America’s Black Holocaust Museum. Meanwhile, I worked in photojournalism, writing and shooting for the local papers. That got me into doing short and long documentaries, and then feature films. Many of these films were about social issues, gun violence, education, race or culture.
America’s Black Holocaust Museum was created in 1988 by Dr. James Cameron to explore neglected stories of the Black experience from pre-captivity to the present day. The original museum closed in 2008. When did it relaunch and how were you involved?
After Dr. Cameron died in 2006, Social Justice advocate Dr. Fran Kaplan contacted me about making a feature film about Dr. Cameron’s life. He had been a lynching survivor at the age of 16. We wrote a script and won some awards. However, we found there wasn’t much of a market for our film. Several years later in 2010, after the Black Holocaust Museum had closed, we started to find ways to reimagine the museum in a new location. Fran launched the website in 2012 with a group of virtual exhibits. We had a lot of U.S. visitors and from around the world. Currently, we have a quarter million viewers from about 200 countries. But it took twelve years before the physical museum could be built. We opened in 2022. It is operated by the Dr. James Cameron Legacy Foundation.
As executive director of the America’s Black Holocaust Museum, what are your responsibilities?
After the original museum closed, we gathered the archives into one space, and we started to create a new organization with a new board of directors. I did that work from 2012 until 2019. Meanwhile, Fran Kaplan created our digital site, and Reggie Jackson did public relations and speaking. My job now is managing our team, working with our development people, and running the organization—marketing, finance, fund raising, events and engagement with the community. A humbling responsibility.
The museum is creating a venue for the difficult conversations that Milwaukee and America should have regarding the harmful legacies of slavery and Jim Crow in America. How would you describe those conversations?
Our primary focus is the museum space, the in-person education. But we are doing more programming in our social media space, the website. And also, in the community where our griots [storytellers] give talks and lectures. When you look at conflict around the world throughout human history, the paradigm is that one people decides that another people are inferior or don’t have rights to a geographical space. That includes race, religion, economics, education and property. It is fascinating to me how many people are interested in the story of world history as presented at our museum, namely what has happened to the descendants of former slaves in America. We welcome groups and organizations to have dialogues and exchanges. In the current world, there are many differences in political, cultural, religious and racial spaces. There is a lot of “us and them” and much less “we.” One purpose of the museum is how do “we” begin to heal.
I travel America’s back roads and small towns, talking to rural residents. I’ve walked the inner city streets and conversed with Black residents. The two cultures are very different in everything from vocabulary to music to family interaction to cultural preferences. Why can’t we accept these differences? We are all Americans, after all.
Yeah, what we need to do is get to a place where we don’t have to behave the same, but we certainly can respect one another. I’ve had a diverse education growing up, and I think that is an extraordinary blessing. If your only reference to another culture is through the news, then we need to create better access to one another. In the museum, we work on that concept every day.
You once said, “Dr. Cameron’s vision of a thorough investigation of our collective American history as a building block for reconciliation and ultimately healing—I think that is a vision worth investing in.” Are you talking about the reconciliation and healing between Blacks and whites?
That is a part of what I meant. Reconciliation. Dr. Cameron was trying to show that aspects of American history damaged everyone. No one escaped that history without harm. Slavery consisted of one group of people being taken from a homeland and distributed all over the world as slaves to colonial societies. Slavery did not just take place in the United States. Only about six percent of slaves ended up here. Four hundred and some years later, think about the damage that has been done by all this displacement. Many of the Africans who descend from slave owners still carry their owners’ last names. But if all races piece their genetic histories together, many will go back through slavery.
I’ve read that the museum holds community programming in libraries, schools and universities, faith-based and other community organizations. Can you elaborate?
All of those institutions are in our space, whether partnering or doing their own programming. The Milwaukee Public Library system was one of our first primary partners. Still is. We put on a number of educational programs in those little library community rooms. I am fortunate to live in Milwaukee, the parks, the lake, the green space, the connected library system. But still, Milwaukee is one of the most hyper-segregated cities in the country. The museum is committed to helping resolve segregation through new tools of understanding.
You once said there is a lot of undeveloped potential for the museum online and in its physical space. How will you go about exploring that potential?
We are a traditional museum catering to folks who frequent museums. We also try to create new opportunities for access whether on our website or partnering with other organizations like our partnerships with Milwaukee colleges and school systems. But we want to create more opportunities in other physical spaces and in the virtual world. Currently, we get a lot of school groups, educators, social workers and the faith-based community. We have created a space that people feel comfortable visiting, no matter what their ethnic backgrounds.
The Exhibition
After our conversation ended, Pruitt guided me through the museum. Early on in the tour, Pruitt pointed to a sizable display that divided three time periods in a kind of vast pie chart. SLAVERY 1619 to 1863, JIM CROW 1863 to 1965, CIVIL RIGHTS 1965 to today. That imposing visual about knocked the wind out of me. To comprehend the reality that one human group had to spend 250 years as slaves only because of the color of their skin, is appalling, one tribe treating another tribe worse than draft animals. All because the so-called civilized white race had gained the economic power. Ironically, most of these white leaders were Christian.
Pruitt must have read my thought. He said, “The vast majority of time the Black people spent on this continent was as property, 1619 to 1863. How could one group of humans decide that this was appropriate behavior toward another group?”
I studied the drawings of the holding facilities where African slaves were housed before being shipped off to all parts of the world. Crammed into tiny, tight compartments and stacked on top of each other, these captives were barely able to move. On slave ships, Africans were packed in their own urine and feces, resulting in rampant disease. Many lost their lives in the holding facility and in the middle passage across the seas.
But there was one beam of light. Between 1800 and 1865, 100,000 enslaved people escaped through the underground railroad, most to Canada because U.S. Marshals were required to arrest runaway slaves, even in the north where many states banned slavery.
In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution guaranteed equal civil and legal rights to all citizens, including formerly enslaved people, but the Jim Crow era made a mockery of that amendment.
I thought about the ABHM founder, James Cameron, who tried to help Americans develop the power of empathy and acceptance, regardless of skin color or ethnic background. I also thought of what white scholar Fran Kaplan once told me, “I am very happy that I get to work on the side of love. Dr. Cameron provided me with that gift.”
For more information, visit abhmuseum.org.
