Philadelphia native Daniel A. Moore, who founded a pioneering African American history museum in Atlanta in 1978, died March 4 at the age of 88, writes Adam Nossiter for The New York Times.

Moore, who started his career as a filmmaker with a successful business in Philadelphia, moved his eclectic collection of artifacts in 1984 to a 1910 brick building on Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue, known as “Sweet Auburn” for its importance to African American history. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on the same avenue, which is today home to the King Center.

Moore established the museum with the help of a handful of well-off patrons and Fulton County, which donated the land. He decided to focus on the entire African American experience, from Africa to the Middle Passage, as well as from enslavement to the civil rights campaign and what came after.

The name of the museum, the African American Panoramic Experience, or APEX, reflected Moore’s ambition to “make sure they see the other side of us — they see that there is a genius in us,” he said in a 2004 interview.

The museum has always been heterogeneous, with artifacts donated by the Smithsonian and Moore’s trips to Africa helping stock the museum.

Read more about Daniel A. Moore and his lasting legacy at The New York Times.

_____