MILWAUKEE — A Milwaukee man who survived a lynching when he was 16 was memorialized on Monday with a holiday in his name, according to WITI.
James Cameron founded America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee in 1988. The original museum closed in 2008, but it has since reopened at a new location.
Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele declared Monday “Dr. James Cameron Day” in the county.
“What’s incredible is in his lifetime, rather than be embittered toward society, he knew we are better than this, and so he devoted his life to making it better. And so this museum tells the story not just of a man who was born in Wisconsin, who lived here in Milwaukee, who was lynched, but the story of race relations in America since before we were a county,” said Abele.
Cameron died in 2006, and is the only known survivor of a lynching in America.
On Juneteenth Day in 1988, Cameron opened America’s Black Holocaust Museum to educate people about the harmful legacies of slavery.
