GERMANTOWN (WPVI) Gwen Ragsdale is on a mission to share the history of slavery as it relates to the African-American experience through the artifacts featured at the Lest We Forget Museum of Slavery.
She and her husband, J. Justin Ragsdale, founded the museum in 2002 in Port Richmond, but have since relocated it to Philadelphia s Germantown neighborhood.
Gwen says they have the only museum with actual slavery artifacts and visitors won t see a collection like this anywhere else in the Philadelphia area. Her husband started collecting the items in the late 1960s.
She says the first shackle J. Justin collected was found in a trunk belonging to his Great-Uncle Bub who lived in South Carolina. She says that first shackle inspired her husband to want to collect other slave shackles.