Wisconsin: Museum With Focus on Blacks’ Struggles Is Closing

Financial problems are causing America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, a museum started by a lynching survivor, to close its doors on Friday after 20 years. But the museum’s board chairman, Reggie Jackson, said he was certain that reconfiguring the board, a new fund-raising effort and increasing awareness would allow the museum to open again. “We have every intention of reopening the museum once we get a plan in place,” Mr. Jackson said. The lagging economy, building debt, a revolving door of executive directors over the past eight years and the death of its founder have all contributed to the museum’s state, said Bethany Criss, the museum’s interim executive director. One of the first of its kind in the country, the museum explores the struggles of blacks in America. It was founded in 1988 by James Cameron, above, who, in 1930, survived a lynch mob in Marion, Ind. He died in 2006 at 92