I didn’t expect the museum to be so small. To me, such a tragic site deserved much more. And yet, the size was perfect. It was intimate. The exhibition was not about slavery alone, but about people.

This is made clear when one sees the central display: models of a family gather around to coffins, one for an adult, and one for a child. A girl hugs a woman. Men outstretch their hands in prayer. To see the models, who look so realistic, is to be taken back in time, and to sneak a peek on the lives of others.

By the display are a set of photos of skeletons–of people. Those people got the same treatment, I realized. They weren’t just bodies, but they were people with loved ones and dreams and opinions and souls. Sometimes the past seems so far away. We are in a blissful bubble, where slavery has statistics and sketches on old yellowed paper and black-and-white photos that are fading away. Or, in this case, many watercolors trying to make us connect strokes and blobs with humans. But as I stared at each and every one of the remains, as I snapped photos of the models and of artifacts that surely belonged to someone, as I read a small paragraph about a man named Cuffee who was burned alive for something he didn’t do, the past became clear. It became real, and not just someone one knows about. It became something I could feel, which I always love to do with history.

After a while, when I went to see the movie, I felt this again as we watched little Amelia walk down the streets. These people lived in a vibrant world, not the monochromatic one were picture. They smelt the sea-salt air, felt the sharp cold, struggled with aches and heard horrible words spoken about them. They talked and laughed and cried and moaned and groaned. They were alive.

It was after I bought a magnet that I walked with Acadia out to the actual memorial. The spiral walkway led down to a map, signifying the connection between countries, and how people, those long-gone people, had roots to many other places and New York. I connected this to the various flags inside the museum. What stood out to me was going inside the monument. Something about it felt so serene. I suppose it had to do with the single opening that displayed the puffy clouds and blue sky. When I was there, part of me wanted to just stay there, sitting and taking it all in. But I didn’t.

After all, the people who rested here couldn’t.