Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery has made The New York Times’ list of the world’s top travel destinations for 2024.

The New York Times identifies only 52 places around the world and writes that EJI’s Legacy Sites is an especially inspiring experience for travelers interested in American history and its legacy.

The New York Times encourages visitors to come to Montgomery, Alabama, in 2024 to experience the new Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, a 17-acre park that will exhibit works by world-class artists like Kehinde Wiley, Simone Leigh and Alison Saar, as well as artifacts, including dwellings relocated from a cotton plantation and a pen where enslaved people were held. The sculpture park is expected to open this year, but a date has not been announced.

Aerial view of the Alabama River near Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. (Equal Justice Initiative ∕ Human Pictures)

Dwelling inhabited by enslaved people at Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. (Equal Justice Initiative ∕ Human Pictures)

EJI’s new Freedom Monument Sculpture Park will be opening soon featuring world-class art, artifacts, dwellings relocated from a cotton plantation and a pen where enslaved people were held. (Equal Justice Initiative ∕ Human Pictures)

Dwelling inhabited by enslaved people at Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. (Equal Justice Initiative ∕ Human Pictures)

The sculpture park will offer an immersive, interactive journey during which visitors will listen to Muscogee family stories as they were told centuries ago, and step inside a train car like those used to traffic enslaved people to Montgomery on this very spot overlooking the Alabama River.

At its heart stands the 43-foot-tall National Monument to Freedom, dedicated to the millions of enslaved Black people who were emancipated at the end of the Civil War. As the New York Times writes, “the steel-walled monument, which resembles an open book,” will be engraved with more than 120,000 surnames chosen by formerly enslaved people and officially registered in the 1870 Census.

Descendants will be able to locate family names memorialized on the monument and use kiosks at the visitor center to learn more about their family history.

“Freedom Monument Sculpture Park is a unique place where visitors can learn about the lives of enslaved people in the very location where they were trafficked and enslaved,” EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson said. “The National Monument to Freedom also provides a powerful opportunity for Black Americans to find their names – the names chosen by their foreparents and passed down to millions of Black families.”

Hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world have visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum since they opened in 2018.

EJI is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. Founded in 1989 by Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and best-selling author of “Just Mercy,” EJI is a private, nonprofit organization. EJI works with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment and are committed to changing the narrative about race in America.

Dedicated to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned, EJI provides legal assistance to death row prisoners, confronts abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aids children prosecuted as adults. EJI recently launched new programs aimed at reducing poverty in America, including a program to address food insecurity and a health clinic providing free care to vulnerable populations. The Alabama Power Foundation has provided support to EJI.

Click here to learn more about EJI, the museum and the memorial, including visitor information.