America’s Black Holocaust Museum (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

African American Civil Rights Network

America’s Black Holocaust Museum chronicles African American history, weaving the narrative through an account of Milwaukee and Black Milwaukeeans. The museum features both online and physical exhibits which explore major themes like African American art, music, and cultural production in addition to periods in African American history like enslavement, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Modern Civil Rights Movement, and mass incarceration. America’s Black Holocaust Museum has engaged in a variety of programming and through the years has sponsored films, publications, commemorative events, presentations, workshops, traveling exhibits, small group discussions, a book club, curriculum development, and arts performances. Collectively, the museum endeavors that exhibits and programming facilitate racial reconciliation and healing.

James Cameron founded America’s Black Holocaust Museum. In 1914, Cameron was born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. However, his family moved often and when he was 14, they settled in Marion, Indiana. In 1930, at the age of 16, Cameron and two other African American boys, Thomas Shipp and Abraham Smith, were accused of murder. Shortly after they were charged, a mob removed the boys from their jail cell and assaulted them. They quickly lynched Shipp and Smith.

Cameron was saved shortly after a rope was placed around his neck. He was then tried and convicted as an accessory to the murder and spent approximately five years in prison before he was paroled. Cameron later organized National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branches in Indiana. After retiring as a boiler engineer in Milwaukee, in 1988 he founded America’s Black Holocaust Museum.

America’s Black Holocaust Museum became a part of the African American Civil Rights Network in 2024.

The African American Civil Rights Network recognizes the African American Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the sacrifices made by those who fought against discrimination and segregation. Created by the African American Civil Rights Act of 2017, and coordinated by the National Park Service, the Network tells the stories of the people, places, and events of the U.S. African American Civil Rights Movement through a collection of public and private resources to include properties, facilities, and programs.

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