Inner City Teens Win Their 2nd Polo Championship

In a sport associated more with royalty and the well-to-do suburban country club set than the inner city, a team of black kids from Philadelphia reign supreme. On Sunday, a team from Philadelphia’s Work to Ride polo program captured the United States Polo Association Tournament Championship in Charlottesville, Va., taking the crown for the second…

Read More

Griots At The Museum

Griot with kora

Griots are the oral historians of West Africa, who travel from town to town as living newspapers, carrying in their heads an incredible store of local history and current events. At ABHM we call the curators of our exhibits “griots,” because they tell our history and respond to visitors’ comments and questions in the Comments section at the foot of each new exhibit.

Read More

Dr. James Cameron, Museum Founder and Lynching Survivor

James Cameron, also known as "Jim" to his sisters and "Apples" to his classmates, in school picture. Courtesy of the Cameron Family.

James Cameron was just sixteen in 1930 when he and two other teens were lynched in Marion, Indiana. His friends were killed but, miraculously, James survived. He spent a year in jail awaiting trial for the murder that triggered the lynching. He was sentenced as an accessory before the fact and served four years in the Indiana Reformatory with hardened adult criminals.

Cameron believed God saved him for a purpose. He left prison resolved to do something “worthwhile and God-like.” He spent the rest of his long life working to help us understand this tragic chapter of American history. Dr. Cameron showed us how to cope with our painful legacy through love, justice, and reconciliation.

Read More