National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis , Tennessee, features exhibits on the history of the civil rights movement in the United States. It also conducts educational programs as part of its mission to “inspire participation in civil and human rights globally.” The museum presents Freedom Awards annually to honor individuals “who have fought for freedom, justice, and equality in America and around the world.”
Most of the museum’s exhibits center around events in the United States during the 1950’s and 1960’s. Some of the events featured are the Montgomery bus boycott ; the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision by the Supreme Court of the United States ; and the 1963 March on Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital.
The museum consists of the former Lorraine Motel, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, and a nearby building from which his assassin shot him. On April 4, 1968, while standing on the motel balcony, King was shot and killed by James Earl Ray, a white drifter and escaped convict. King was in Memphis to support a strike organized by African American sanitation workers. Many black guests used the motel during the years of racial segregation, and King stayed there often. Racial segregation is the forced separation of groups of people based on race.
Much of the motel has been preserved and restored to its appearance on the day of King’s assassination. The motel’s original 1960’s sign stands on the site of the original parking lot, where period automobiles are parked. The balcony and room 306, where King stayed on the day he was killed, may be viewed by visitors. The room contains period furniture and other items that recreate the look of the room at the time King stayed there.
After King’s death, the Lorraine Motel’s business declined, and the building went into foreclosure. In 1982, a group of local African American community members saved the motel from being destroyed. That year, this group, called the Martin Luther King Memphis Memorial Foundation, bought the motel. Later, the foundation’s name was changed to the Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation. Construction of the museum began in 1987. The Lorraine closed as a motel in 1988. The museum opened under its current name in 1991. It was expanded in 2002 to include the Young and Morrow Building, the site of the former rooming house from which Ray fired the shot that took King’s life.
The museum was closed for renovation in November 2012. It reopened in April 2014 with new exhibits, interactive displays, oral histories, and dozens of short films.
