Museum Director Uses Slave Shackles as Powerful Teaching Tool on America's Painful History

At the Roots 101 Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, founder Lamont Collins employs an unconventional but deeply impactful educational method: allowing willing visitors to experience the weight and reality of slave shackles. The museum houses shackles crafted 400 years ago in Ghana, among numerous artifacts documenting the African American experience. By inviting visitors—particularly white Americans—to briefly wear these restraints, Collins creates what he describes as a visceral learning experience that transcends abstract historical narratives.

Shackles were instrumental instruments of the transatlantic slave trade, used to restrain and dehumanize over 12 million Africans across three centuries. European and American slave traders deployed them in multiple forms: designed for wrists, ankles, waist, and neck, and even made in children's sizes. These restraints were forced upon kidnapped and sold Africans cramped into ships destined for slave markets in the Deep South. Specialized collar shackles featured bells or spiked ends to assist slave catchers in tracking runaways. Beyond physical constraint, shackles served psychological purposes—reinforcing the denial of freedom and functioning as both punishment and deterrent.

Collins founded the museum in 2020 following donations from collectors and activists. His approach to historical education emphasizes embodied understanding. "It's such a deep learning tool," he explains. "No matter how we hear people tell stories, how people try to change the story, the reality of the stories is in those shackles. Nobody can deny the reality of what you feel in those shackles." A video of Collins placing shackles on a white woman's wrists gained significant social media attention last year, sparking broader conversations about how Americans engage with difficult histories.

Collins acknowledges resistance to this confrontational pedagogy. Some visitors decline to wear the shackles, while others become emotional after brief experience. He uses these moments as teaching opportunities: "I would say to them 'Why I can't put these on you for two seconds and we had them on for 200 years.' It starts a conversation." Collins observes that while many people express interest in learning history, they often prefer to do so within comfortable boundaries. His work challenges visitors to move beyond passive consumption of historical facts toward direct, uncomfortable engagement with the material reality of slavery.

This educational initiative takes on broader significance as part of America's 250th anniversary commemorations, prompting national reflection on how the country acknowledges and teaches its foundational injustices.