My Travels

On Monday, January 18, Americans commemorate civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., with a federal holiday. I thought this would be an apt time to describe my recent visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.

Follow up:

The museum was built within and around the former Lorraine Motel - the same motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The museum first opened in September, 1991. In 2001 there was an expansion, when the boarding house, across the street, from which James Earl Ray fired his shot, was acquired. While Dr. King is obviously featured at the museum, the exhibits are much broader, telling the story of the civil rights struggles of blacks, from the arrival of the first slave ships to the colonies through to Dr. King's assassination. The expansion covers more recent events and a look at civil rights progress for various groups of peoples. The first thing a visitor does is view an HBO documentary film called The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306. The film profiles Rev. Samuel Kyles. Kyles was with Dr. King, when he was shot. The film was nominated for an Academy Award. Much of the museum is a continuous tabloid across the walls, building a timeline with exhibits focusing on key events. Much of the experience is through reading and looking at pictures, with occasional monitors showing short videos. There aren't a lot of physical pieces of history, in the museum. There are some mockups, such as a bus, with statues, that helps tell the story of Rosa Parks and a replica of a Birmingham jail cell in which Dr. King was once held. Because of this, it is quite an exhausting experience to try to absorb all 36,000 sq.ft. of the museum exhibits.

It is also exhausting, emotionally. It is difficult to spend four hours examining the inhumanities that man inflicted on his fellow man. I can understand prejudice. It can be natural for people to fear the unknown or the different. I don't think it is fair to judge people because of their fears. Fear is primal. What I can't understand is the cruelty evident in so many of the pictures and videos on exhibit. Actually, to be more specific, it is the obvious joy taken in such cruelty. There are photographs of men being lynched, protesters being beaten, and young girls being escorted to school by federal marshals, and in all those photographs there are crowds of people taunting them. These are pictures of people committing cruelties and the expressions on their faces aren't fear, but joy.

History shows us that people tend not to learn the lessons of history. While the holocaust was occurring in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe in the 1940s, people around the world did not believe such as thing was possible. They didn't remember that the Turks had done the same thing to the Armenians just 25 years earlier. There was no museum to convey that lesson for the Armenians. There are such museums for the Jewish holocaust, but the lessons they teach didn't stop similar horrific events in South Africa, Bosnia-Serbia, or in Rwanda. Maybe distance is the reason. The National Civil Rights Museum is in the heart of the south - right where many of the terrible events occurred.

Almost 200,000 people visit the NCRM each year. I can only hope that many of them are children that will absorb the harsh lessons and ensure that such things never happen again. It is unfathomable to me that it could ever be considered normal and okay for a restaurant to disallow or segregate customers based on the amount of melanin in their skin. It is repulsive that elderly black women would have to give up their bus seats to healthy young white men. It is difficult to understand how good people let such bad things happen and did not rise up to stop it.

And that brings me back to the man being commemorated today. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was human. He certainly had flaws. But he did rise up to stop these injustices. Repeated beatings did not make him stop. Being arrested and sentenced to hard labor did not make him stop. Threats against his life did not make him stop. Beings stabbed in the chest did not make him stop. A bullet was the only thing that stopped him - but it did not stop the message he communicated so eloquently.

Dr. King had come to Memphis to support the local striking sanitation workers. The night before he was killed he gave a speech that ended with the following paragraph:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

It is obvious from those words that he was well aware that the vocations he had chosen would make it unlikely that he would live past 40. There were so many threats against him that he asked his people to stop telling him about them.

The tour in the first building ends with a jarring exhibit. For the last few hours the visitor has been following walls of exhibits that all allow a bit of distance from the historical events, because they're words or photos or videos or statues. But suddenly the visitor comes around a corner and finds themselves in the hotel room in which Dr. King was staying. Behind a piece of glass is his bed, the day's newspaper still on it. Directly in front of the visitor is the door. A door he stepped through and was almost immediately murdered.

The tour starts again across the street with the boarding room Ray was staying in, and a view from the windows where he took his shot. There is a pretty detailed exihibit on the criminal investigation that led to Ray's conviction.

As with all historical events, it is interesting to ponder how the world would be different if the event had happened differently. Where would we be today if Rosa Parks had not refused to give up her seat? Where would we be today if thirteen Topeka, Kansas parents hadn't sued for their children to get the education they deserve? Where would we be if James Meredith hadn't demanded his right to attend the University of Mississippi? Or if Dr. King hadn't marched on Washington in 1963 and said:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The National Civil Rights Museum provides information and context on many such examples and every American, if they can, should visit it.