On March 19, 2013, the genocide trial against General José Efraín Ríos Montt and Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez began in Guatemala. Ríos Montt led a coup d’etat that brought him to power from March 1982 through August 1983, and Rodríguez was his chief of military intelligence during the same period. This was an historic trial, not only for Guatemala, but for all of Latin America. It was the first trial for genocide to take place in the region, which was plagued by repressive military dictatorships that committed all number of crimes against the populations of their respective countries, with the most intense years between 1960 and 1990. On May 10, 2013, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt was convicted of genocide and sentenced to 80 years in prison; Rodríguez was acquitted. Montt’s is the first conviction for genocide in Latin America and the first in the world issued by a local court.

Guatemala is a small country (108,000 km2) located in Central America that borders Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Belize. At the time of Ríos Montt’s dictatorship, Guatemala had a population of about 8 million. Ríos Montt and Rodriguez Sanchez were specifically accused of massacres committed against the Maya-Ixil population that left thousands of men, women and children tortured or killed, hundreds of women subjected to sexual slavery to the soldiers, and thousands more internally displaced or expelled outside the borders of Guatemala. The crimes being tried in this historical process make up just a fraction of the terror that overwhelmed Guatemala in the 36 years of armed conflict and repression (1960-1996). According to the information gathered by the Commission of Historical Clarification of the UN (CEH) and the report of the Recovery of Historical Memory by the Archbishop of Guatemala (REMHI), those 36 years of repression left a total of 200,000 victims – including 45,000 disappeared – in addition to one million internally and externally displaced people. 85% of all victims were indigenous and 93% of total deaths and disappearances were caused by state security forces.

The trial was prepared and conducted by the Center for Legal Action (CALDH), who had already presented the case to the National Court in Spain in 1999. The trial was carried out thanks to those that have worked tirelessly for over 30 years in search of truth and justice: survivors of massacres and repression, victims’ relatives, exiles, lawyers and human rights defenders, religious organizations, international institutions, and organizations dedicated to the exhumation of mass graves and research in police files. Among these are two members of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience: the Historical Archive of the National Police (AHPN) and Memorial para la Concordia. AHPN has digitized, in the past seven years, more than 15 million documents dating from 1975 to 1985, which was the period of greatest intensity of the repression in Guatemala. These documents have been indispensable in many trials – including the Ríos Montt case – to strengthen the evidence against those responsible, but also for a greater collective knowledge of the truth. Memorial para la Concordia aims to recover the memories and the dignity of all victims; it also works for the development of spaces and opportunities for dialogue and peaceful resolution of ongoing conflict. At present this is particularly necessary given the increasing polarization in the country.

Although this trial took years to materialize, and although the vast majority of crimes committed have not been tried – nor those responsible punished – this historic conviction is of enormous significance. Others will follow. Guatemala needs to confront its past, acknowledge the truth, and prosecute those responsible for the crimes committed. Only then can peace be constructed and justice promoted to fight inequality and racism for a less violent and polarized society with freedom, the rule of law, and respect for the dignity and human rights of all.

Julio Solórzano Foppa is a historian, artistic producer, and promoter of human rights. He is the son of poet and feminist Alaíde Foppa and brother of Mario and Juan Pablo Solórzano Foppa, all victims of repression in Guatemala.

-James L. Farmer, Jr., April 4, 1968

Fifty-five years ago today, on the balcony of one of the only hotels in Memphis that served black clientele, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot dead. His assassination brought the country and much of the world to its feet, inciting violent riots, peaceful reflection, and re-invigorated demands for justice.

Each year on April 4, it is not the death of Dr. King that we remember; it is his life and his work. We keep his legacy as more than just a tragic moment in time but as an ongoing struggle toward his vision of brotherhood and equality.

The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, housed in the old Lorraine Hotel where King was assassinated, is a tangible reminder of King’s untimely death. But the museum’s real tribute to Dr. King is in the programs they conduct to fulfill his mission. NCRM uses the stories of the Civil Rights movement as inspiration to address lingering issues of inequality – access to education, immigration reform, marital rights – through programs like the Student Responsibility March, giving the local community a voice and an opportunity to take action for change.

In many ways, memorials around the world are constructed in the heart and in the mind as much as on brick and mortar. In Kenya (where Dr. King was invited for the first anniversary of independence in 1964), government monuments to the victims of state and inter-ethnic violence abound: streets have been renamed for martyrs, buildings marked with historic placards, expensive stone monuments erected in public squares. More important to ordinary Kenyans were community memorialization initiatives that highlighted everyday people and worked to heal the very personal scars of conflict. Bodymapping emerged as a way for survivors to document their stories, but also to reflect on them, understand them, and use them to build stronger futures. Whether anyone ever sees these maps is secondary, because the memorials live on in the hearts – and actions – of the survivors.

This deliberate effort move beyond passive monuments and draw a clear linkage from memory to action is the hallmark of the Sites of Conscience movement. Rather than letting today serve only as a sad anniversary of one man’s tragedy, Sites of Conscience around the world look at it as opportunity to remember Dr. King’s goals and ambitions. What actions can you take toward Dr. King’s vision of equality, peace, and brotherhood across races, religions, and nations? As his good friend James Farmer said, “that is the kind of memorial we should build for him.”

The Liberation War Museum opened on March 22, 1996, coinciding with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the struggle for freedom in Bangladesh – 42 years ago today – on March 26, 1971, now celebrated as Independence Day. It sought to fill in the gaps created by contemporary political crisis and social vacuum by collecting, preserving, and disseminating information, personal stories, documents, photographs, objects, and artifacts related to the nation’s defining moment, the Liberation War. In the process of this work, we the trustees became aware of hundreds of mass graves and evidence of unspeakable crimes and atrocities. Thus we expanded our terms of reference to include investigative and activist pursuits of justice for crimes against humanity and genocide committed in 1971.

In one of our galleries, for example, on display is a beautiful but faded turquoise short sleeve shirt. It belonged to a 4 month old baby girl named Rehana. She was the daughter of valiant freedom fighter Abdus Salam Khan, the commander of a group of freedom fighters in Digholia, Khulna. The Pakistani Army and their collaborators had put a price of 1,000,000 Taka (about $12,500 USD) on his head. But he paid a much higher price when his first born baby girl fell prey to the Pakistani Army, just as millions of other women and children whose husbands and fathers had gone off to fight for their motherland: In April 1971, Rehana was crushed to death by the boot of a Pakistani Soldier in nearby Senhati. She was wearing this shirt at the time of her death. Her story embodies the death of innocence the hands of the ruthless in Bangladesh in 1971. We are yet to be free from the shackles of fear.

Justice for these crimes committed by the Pakistan military and their local agents in Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War has been denied for the last 42 years. It is a sad reality that Bengalis who suffered such atrocities, genocide, and crimes against humanity had to remain in waiting for almost 40 years. Uncovering the truth of this history is important not only for the war generation, but also for future generations to understand the pain and sacrifice endured for the birth of our nation. It is also a tool to help young people relate to the past and draw connections to lingering contemporary issues. The Liberation War Museum believes that future generations, if enriched with the heritage of their Motherland and able draw inspiration and pride from the spirit of the Liberation War, will contribute to nation-building to create a better future.

This blog post first appeared on UpNext, the official blog of the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services.

I’m married to an immigrant.  My two children have Arab names, eat hummus and baba ghanoush, and—if my husband and I can do a better job using Arabic in our home—will speak two languages.  I consider myself relatively well-informed, well-read, and, through my work coordinating the Immigration and Civil Rights Network of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, engaged in the current immigration reform efforts being proposed by the President and members of Congress.

But in my household, around the dinner table, we don’t talk about immigration.   Though my husband and I both have strong feelings about the debate, our experience often feels like that of a typical museum visitor: through the constant stream of media coverage, we are listening to an immigration audio tour, isolated in our separate experiences and never pausing to speak with each other.

Civil Rights and Immigration Sites of Conscience gathered at the Atlanta History Center in 2012 to model and critique their immigration dialogue programs.

But over the past two years, museum professionals from twenty museums across the country have committed to developing new approaches to immigration by making their museums safe places for visitors to explore and discuss the historic context and contemporary implications of immigration with other visitors.    Their staff received training in designing and facilitating dialogue programs to address immigration issues in their regions and have offered on-site programs to help their communities define the path forward.

Though the lessons have been many, a few stand out:

• Even if your site does not specifically address immigration history, you may be surprised at how your audience views your role within today’s debate.  In a front-end evaluation completed at the National Civil Rights Museum (Memphis, TN), over 80% of visitors agreed that the NCRM was a good place to discuss immigration.

• Programs aren’t one size fits all, and the most successful programs are those that use the unique resources of your staff, site, and community to find an entry point into the debate.  At the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI), the Patriots & Peacemaker Dialogue Project uses an exhibit on Arab and Muslim-American civil and military service to explore questions of patriotism, immigration, and citizenship—asking participants to consider questions such as, “Can someone be patriotic to more than one nation at the same time?”

• Those most successful sites and programs have embraced ongoing dialogue with and between their visitors as an institutional philosophy.  After committing senior staff to the project and hosting separate dialogue trainings for all of their education and interpretive staff, the Atlanta History Center (Atlanta, GA) is currently redefining its entire interpretation strategy and has already implemented dialogue efforts beyond this project, addressing ongoing issues of race in their community.

This week, against a backdrop of increased government and public attention toward immigration reform, these and other sites will gather in New Orleans to complete their training and explore how to continue their work together. We will sit around tables and engage in dialogue with our colleagues about immigration issues in our communities.  When we return home, I hope we’ll do the same at our break room tables, our conference room tables, and even around our dinner tables – because I’m tired of having a solitary experience, just me and my audio tour.  I want museums to be a community “dinner table,” a place of civil discourse, a place where we examine the challenges that lie before us and take that all-important first step of listening to each other.

Sarah Pharaon is the Program Director for North America with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, a worldwide network of  historic sites and museums specifically dedicated to remembering past struggles for justice and addressing their contemporary legacies.  Previously, she worked as Director of Education at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and as the founding curator of the Arab American National Museum. Ms. Pharaon is a consulting trainer on dialogue and community engagement for the National Park Service, and adjunct instructor with Johns Hopkins University. She is the curriculum designer for the American Association for State and Local History training program, “Strengthening Interpretation through Compelling Stories.”