Museum of Mississippi History & Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
The Museum of Mississippi History & Mississippi Civil Rights Museum opened in December 2017. It is possible to visit one without visiting the other.
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
Explore the movement that changed the nation. Discover stories of Mississippians like Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer and Vernon Dahmer—as well as those who traveled many miles to stand beside them, come what may, in the name of equal rights for all.Mississippi is a key chapter in the nation's ongoing struggle for equality, but the state has been slow to acknowledge the racism and violence in its past. The new museum now tells that difficult story.Museum guests journey through the Emancipation Proclamation and Reconstruction, when African-American communities begin to thrive. Then the tour takes a turn into a room dominated by a tree with limbs sprawling overhead.
There are five lynching monoliths, etched with the names of some 600 victims. The museum was dedicated by President Trump in 2017. It spans from the Stone Age and Native American cultures through the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 to Hurricane Katrina. The civil rights museum brings a deeper focus to the 30-year period when Mississippi was at the center of the movement. Both museums tap the vast collection of the state archives, including the papers of Medgar and Myrlie Evers-Williams.
Sources
"About the Museum." Museum of Mississippi History. Accessed February 8, 2018. http://mmh.mdah.ms.gov/story/about-museum.
Kwasny, Emmalyne. "Mississippi history, civil rights museums preparing for December opening." Clarion Ledger. June 28, 2017. https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/2017/06/28/mississippi-museums-preparing-december-ope...
Photo: Mississippi Department of Archives and History