La Crosse : Biographies - Cameron, James

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On August 7, 1930, three black teenagers were dragged from their jail cells in Marion, Indiana, by a howling mob. Two were hanged, and the third, James Cameron, escaped. Cameron, born in La Crosse,...

On August 7, 1930, three black teenagers were dragged from their jail cells in Marion, Indiana, by a howling mob. Two were hanged, and the third, James Cameron, escaped. Cameron, born in La Crosse, WI, was 16 years old at the time. Cameron became a well-known civil rights activist, educator, and self-trained historian. Cameron founded the Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He created the museum as a place for Milwaukeeans and people across the country to visit and get that unvarnished truth of our country’s racial history in order to promote racial reconciliation and forge a better nation. Dr. Cameron founded the museum after he had visited Jerusalem and the Holocaust museum there. He saw a lot of parallels between how African Americans were and are treated in the United States and how Jewish persons were treated in the time before and during the Holocaust. He found that term fit what happened during slavery and Jim Crow.

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