Alabama newspaper apologizes for past coverage of lynchings: 'We must never be as wrong as this again'
Alabama's newest museum, the Legacy Museum opened in Montgomery on Thursday. The new museum was visited by Oprah before officially opening, and houses moving exhibits on lynching and slavery.
Today, the city's newspaper, The Advertiser, published two pieces taking responsibility for its role in lynchings.
"We take responsibility for our proliferation of a false narrative regarding the treatment of African-Americans in those disgraceful days," the newspaper wrote. "The Advertiser was careless in how it covered mob violence and the terror foisted upon African-Americans from Reconstruction through the 1950s. We dehumanized human beings. Too often we characterized lynching victims as guilty before proven so and often assumed they committed the crime."
The Advertiser discussed some specific stories where it glorified lynchings and published an editorial that discussed the ways it dehumanized the victims of lynchings.
"We are supposed to hold people accountable for their wrongs, and not with a wink and a nod," the paper wrote. "We propagated a world view rooted in racism and the sickening myth of racial superiority."
Watch Oprah's emotional visit to the museum on a recent episode of 60 Minutes below.