The Legacy Museum occupies a historic building in downtown Lynchburg and presents the African American experience in the region through rotating exhibitions and permanent collections. The museum's focus on local history — the tobacco economy, the Civil War period, segregation, and the civil rights era — roots national stories in specific Lynchburg lives and places, which makes it more vivid than purely national-scope museums.
Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, a Lynchburg physician who trained the pioneering Black tennis players Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe in his backyard on Pierce Street, is among the figures commemorated here. Lynchburg's African American history is substantial and often overlooked by visitors who focus on the Civil War and plantation architecture — the museum corrects that imbalance.