A new museum and memorial in Montgomery, Alabama has been designed by MASS Design Group and the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) to confront America’s history of slavery.

The Memorial to Peace and Justice, which is scheduled to open in 2017, is planned as a space of remembrance “that embraces truth and inspires reflection and change.” It will be the country’s first national memorial to victims of lynching.

In a joint statement, MASS and the EJI said: “America has done very little to recognise the damage created by our long history of slavery. The last century brought decades of racial terror, lynching, and segregation. It has been just 50 years since black people in this country were given the right to vote or to attend public schools, and even those rights have yet to be fully implemented.

“The discussion about lynching and its legacy has been sorely inadequate, and that has contributed to continuing struggle, exclusion, and discrimination.”

The 2,800sq m (30,000sq ft) memorial building will sit on six acres of park land in Montgomery. The simple, classical structure will contain the names of over 4,000 lynching victims engraved on concrete columns representing each county in the US where racial terror lynchings took place.

Counties will be invited to retrieve duplicate columns as a memorial to the victims.

A separate building will house the site’s museum, named From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. It will be situated within 150 yards of one of the South's most prominent slave auction sites and the Alabama River dock and rail station where tens of thousands of enslaved black people were trafficked.

The museum, which is expected to open in April 2017, will connect the history of racial inequality with contemporary issues of mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and police violence.

Housing the nation's most comprehensive collection of data on lynching, EJI said it will be “an engine for education about the legacy of racial inequality and for the truth and reconciliation that leads to real solutions to contemporary problems.”

Design firm Local Projects, who worked on the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City, will create the exhibitions, including the recreation of a slave warehouse and auction block.

Art installations from contemporary African American artists such as Sanford Biggers and Hank Willis Thomas will also feature, alongside aterfacts, audio recordings and films.