Thank you for visiting our Virtual Museum!
This is more than a website: it's a 3500+ page Virtual Museum!
So what can you do here?
Here are just a few ideas:
• Discover seldom-told stories in our Online History Galleries.
• Plan your in-person visit to our On-Site museum's galleries.
• Find out what the only known survivor of a US lynching did with the rest of his long life.
• Learn about present and past challenges facing the African American community in our Breaking News blog.
• Take the pledge to be a Freedom Lover and post your photo and/or name on our Roll Call Wall.
• Contribute to ABHM's work of education, reconciliation, and healing.
• Become a Member of the Museum!
ABHM is a one-of-a-kind historical and memorial museum about the Black Holocaust in America.
History museums study, exhibit, and interpret history. Memorial museums explain and commemorate past events of mass suffering.
Over the last 40 years, people around the world have created memorial museums to help their countries and communities make sense of and draw redemptive lessons from terrible periods of man’s inhumanity to man.
James Cameron (pictured above) was inspired to create ABHM when he visited the Yad VaShem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Israel in 1979. Despite surviving a 1930 lynching in which two other teenagers were killed, Dr. Cameron steadfastly maintained his faith in the moral framework of liberty and justice for all embodied in the USA’s founding documents.
Peter Pierceall of Centralia IL, USA, writes:
"Excellent website galleries. I'm a 68 year old white male
and I can unequivocally say
I learned more history of the black experience than I received
in all my years of schooling.
I believe it to be essential education."
ABHM Summer Hours of Operation
Plan Your Visit!
Come see our museum’s new facility and exhibits encompassing over 400 years of history.
Middle Passage Exhibit: The Door of No Return (Jarvis Lawson, MKE Magazine)
OPEN -
Tuesday-Thursday: 10am-5pm
Friday: 10am-3pm
Saturday: 10am-3pm
CLOSED -
Sunday & Monday
For more information, please call our office at (414) 209-3640 or email us at admin@abhmuseum.org. To receive quarterly updates of our events, please Join Our Mailing List.
Featured Event: ABHM Book Club
ABHM Book Club:
Enslaved, Indentured, Free
by Mary Elise Antoine
We will discuss Enslave, Indentured, Fee by Mary Elise Antoine on December 12th at 6 PM via Zoom.
This book narrates the stories of four Black women—Mariah, Patsey, Courtney, and Rachel—who were born into slavery and achieved freedom in Prairie du Chien. Each woman’s journey intertwined over five years, influenced by Marianne Labuche, a free Black woman. Mariah bought her freedom, while Patsey persisted after her enslavers died. Courtney and Rachel successfully filed freedom suits, shedding light on Wisconsin's overlooked history of slavery.
Featured Exhibits
Risking Everything: The Fight for Black Voting Rights
In collaboration with the Wisconsin
Black Historical Society & Museum, the Milwaukee County Historical Society, and the Wisconsin Historical Society, America’s Black Holocaust Museum is proud to announce its newest virtual gallery. Risking Everything: The Fight for Black Voting Rights tells the story of the struggle for Black voting rights through multimedia, text, and even song!
The release of this virtual gallery coincides with the Freedom Summer exhibit on display at ABHM from Oct - Nov 4, the ABHM Book Club on Oct 24, and with Museum Voter Registration Week(s).
A Time of Terror: A Survivor’s Story by Dr. James Cameron
A Time of Terror: A Survivor's Story
The award-winning, expanded third edition of Dr. James Cameron’s memoir
"This forceful and absorbing tale sweeps the reader through a wide range of emotions. The narrative is at once thrilling and unnerving–and interspersed with humor and philosophical reflections on humanity's predicament. For incisive insights into the viciousness of white racism under Jim Crow–and the depths of the human spirit required to resist it, look no further. Cameron's memoir is an inspired meditation on individual human endeavor, comparable to the trials and tribulations of Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas, but with an uplifting ending." - Dr. Stephen Small, educator and author
Click here to learn more about the book, read excerpts, and place bulk orders.
To buy an individual copy, please click here.
Be a Member!
Become a member today! Your membership supports the museum's educational programming and the legacy of museum founder Dr. James Cameron.
Membership benefits for the year include:
- Free admission to our thought-provoking exhibits
- $2 off the admission for additional friends and family
- 15% off museum merchandise
- E-newsletter with updates on what is happening at ABHM
- Early notification and registration access for events and programs
Membership Levels:
- Individual $30 (full benefits for 1 adult)
- Partner $50 (Full membership benefits for 2 adults)
- Family $70 (Full membership for 2 adults and their children or grandchildren, 17 years & under within the same household)
Space Rental
Community groups and other organizations are welcome to rent our Community Room (including a/v equipment and kitchen) for events. Please email admin@abhmuseum.org for more information and to make arrangements
.
Upcoming Online Exhibits
Through One City's Eyes
This special exhibit will examine the past and present impacts of Black Holocaust on the City of Milwaukee. ABHM's home is in historic Bronzeville within the very heart of the most segregated metropolitan area in the USA.
You'll also soon get a peek at our exhibit about Milwaukee's Bronzeville in our onsite (physical) museum – plus a video trailer for a new movie about this once thriving neighborhood.
Film Trailer: Remembering Bronzeville
Tour Request
America's Black Holocaust Museum is happy to offer tours for classes and other groups who want to visit our physical museum.
Groups of 10 or more can also request a guided tour.
Explore. Discover. Learn.
Enter here to discover seldom-told stories from seven historical periods - from pre-captivity to the present day - along with special exhibits.
Here we gather their life stories, say their names, and note where and when these thousands of men, women and children were terrorized and murdered.
Take our Freedom-Lover's Pledge stating your commitment to work for justice for all. Put your name and/or your face on our Roll Call Wall next to those of other Freedom-Lovers who stand with you!
What is the Black Holocaust?
“Holocaust” comes from a Greek word meaning “burnt offering.” The term was first used to describe the massacres of Armenians in the 1890s. It was used again in the 1940s to describe the mass destruction of European Jewish communities by the Nazis, also known by the Hebrew word “Shoah.”
Appallingly, in the last hundred years the world has witnessed many similar atrocities, like the 1975-79 Cambodian Killing Fields, the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, and the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide.
For this reason, the word “holocaust” has come to signify “a series of atrocities organized by one social group against another.”
Breaking News!
Subscribe to our newsletter "The Griot"
(Emailed to you approximately once every 3 months)
"Griot" (pronounced GREE-oh) is a West African term for storyteller. Traditionally, griots travel from city to city and village to village, carrying in their heads an incredible store of local history and current events to be shared. This newsletter is your source for news, events, and community programs from the America's Black Holocaust Museum.
Our Breaking News: Black History in the Making
ABHM regularly brings you current news and culture as reported in the Black press and by predominantly African American journalists in the mainstream press.
Why cover current events in a history museum? Because the past is still present.
As James Baldwin put it, “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.”
Click on the images and titles below to check out the latest!
Support ABHM
Why Support ABHM?
More than ever, our nation needs the healing vision of Dr. James Cameron, our museum’s founder. He dreamed of our nation as “one single and sacred nationality” and believed we could achieve a just and peaceful society through education and empathy-building.
Dr. Cameron's vision is as relevant and compelling today as it was when he survived a lynching at age sixteen. Our online and onsite galleries are spaces where visitors from around the world can experience and discuss African American history as an integral – and crucial – part of the American story.
Learn about the many ways you can contribute to Dr. Cameron's legacy. All gifts to ABHM are tax-deductible.