Select metro Atlanta Kroger employees take special trip to historic museum

MONTGOMERY, Al — Kroger, a major employer in Georgia, recently took local employees more than two and a half hours from Atlanta to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama.

A select group of metro Atlanta Kroger employees boarded a bus to the legacy museum in Montgomery, Alabama, when they arrived, the weight of what they were about to experience was palpable.

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Channel 2′s Audrey Washington traveled with the group to see how this experience impacted them.

Kroger’s African-American associate resource group organized the trip.

The goal was to learn and better understand each other and the local communities they all serve.

“The more we learn the better advocates and allies we can be,” said Christy Backus, associate communications manager of Kroger’s Atlanta division. “To really understand the complete history, from the African slave trade to where we are now and how its impacted lives.”

The Legacy Museum along with the National Memorial for Peace and justice opened just a few years ago in Montgomery.

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The museum is one of a kind, in that it focuses specifically on the impacts of the transatlantic slave trade, the horrors of lynchings and racial brutality in America and issues surrounding mass incarceration.

The outside memorial features 800 six-foot monuments that symbolize and name the thousands of lynching victims in each state and county.

Yutesia Holt, a store leader at a Kroger located on Buford Highway called it triggering.

“Just thinking what happened to our people,” Holt said.

She said the stories of enslaved children hit her the hardest.

She also said she plans to take everything she experienced at the museum back to her other team members and staff.

Johnny l Brown, Kroger’s personal finance manager agreed with Holt.

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“We’ve come a long way but we still have a long way to go,” Brown said. “Some of the things that happened in the early1900′s are still happening today. There’s so much division in our country, so I wish everyone could come here and see what we saw and know how real it is.”

Group members told Channel 2 Action News they plan to bring even more employees and team members to the Legacy Museum.

They said they want as many people as possible to learn about the struggles and triumphs of Black people in America.

The Legacy Museum lives only blocks away from where a significant 19th-century slave auction happened.

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