The lights and the TV camera were all in place and the reporters were dutifully scribbling notes and trying not to trip over the electrical cords scattered about.

Faya Ora Rose Toure, aka Rose Sanders, was inspecting the replica of a slave cabin that will greet visitors as they enter the door of the soon-to-be-opened Slavery and Civil War Museum.

Then came one of those moments that lend credence to the belief that truth really is stranger than fiction.

As Toure turned to face the knot of reporters and gathered onlookers a flashbulb went off, illuminating both Toure and the faade behind her. Toure turned toward the source of the flash, a smile spreading slowly across her face.

“Ah, you caught Rose coming out of the slave cabin, did you?” she asked. “Well that’s all right, I’m not ashamed. They were my people. They were my people.”

The museum was planned, in part, in the hope of fostering just such moments of insight and connection on the part of visitors.

The controversy that is almost certain to surround its very existence needed no planning.

Commissioned by the National Voting Rights Museum, the Slavery and Civil War Museum is set to open June 19 in the old Antiques Mall on Water Avenue.

The date is significant. It was June 19, 1865, when slaves in Texas first learned that they had been freed – some two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that freed all slaves in the Confederate states and two months after the end of the Civil War.

It is considered to be the oldest celebration of the ending of slavery.

Highlighting the museum’s grand opening will be a series of events from June 19-22 that includes a collectibles fair, a Juneteenth film festival, an open air flea market, and the first annual Juneteenth Festival.

Tuesday, reporters were given their first glimpse of the facility.

The museum is one of a recent wave of black history museums being planned in the United States. Charleston, S.C., is planning a $37 million black history museum. Congress has agreed to fund a presidential committee to plan for a black heritage museum in Washington, D.C. And Fredricksburg, Va., is also planning a black history museum.

The offering here is on a considerably more modest scale – initial renovations to the site are being funded by a $100,000 grant – but the stated goal remains much the same.

“We hope to create a positive experience for the people who visit the museum,” said Director Vickie Donaldson. “We want to create an ambience that says, ‘This is how life was.'”

What makes the Slavery and Civil War Museum unique, she added, is that it attempts to tell the story of the Civil War from the point of view of both “those enslaved and those who did the enslaving.”

Explained Donaldson, “The story has been told from both sides, but never has it been told together before. People need to see that tied together, and we want to do it in a way that’s true to the facts. We want to achieve a balance.”

To that end, the museum has consulted such eminent advisers as Harvard University’s Cornell West and Joe Clark, the Paterson, N.J., principal-turned-education consultant who’s story was the basis of the film “Lean on Me.”

Some exhibits, such as an early example of a mechanical cotton picker, aren’t likely to raise many eyebrows. Still others might be considered a bit more inflammatory in nature. There will, for example, be a replica of a slave auction block on display when the museum opens.

Toure said the museum may eventually even conduct mock slave auctions, in which “slave families are separated on the auction block.”

When a reporter ventured to ask whether such an exhibit might not engender “animosity” on the part of some prospective visitors, Toure replied, “It’s curious to me that question is only asked when African-Americans try to reclaim their heritage.”

Referring to various exhibits concerning the Holocaust, she added, “That question is not asked when Jews or other groups try to reclaim their heritage.”

Toure noted that such a museum is particularly appropriate for Selma because the National Voting Rights Museum and the struggle it represents are vestiges of slavery.

“The vestiges of slavery can still be found today,” Toure said. “Perhaps, just perhaps, many of our teachers today still have the expectation that black kids cannot learn because of attitudes that were first developed while blacks were still the victims of slavery.”

Toure said that far too many whites – as well as blacks – today are “ignorant” about the realities of slavery.

That may be about to change.