The Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama is planning a memorial to victims of lynching (see above), as well as a history museum that traces racial injustice from slavery to mass incarceration.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture opens on September 24. On the museum’s website, you can learn about how to host a local event to celebrate the opening, and take a virtual tour of the building.

In a New Yorker article on “the perilous lure of the Underground Railroad,” Kathryn Schulz writes that stories about the loose network of slave escape routes play an outsized role in U.S. culture “in part for suspect reasons: because they assuage our conscience, distract us from tragedy with thrilling adventures, give us a comparatively comfortable place to rest in a profoundly uncomfortable past. Yet there are also deep and honorable reasons that we are drawn to these stories: they show us the best parts of ourselves and articulate our finest vision of our nation.”