SPLC's Civil Rights Museum: Honoring MLK and the Monumental Struggle for Civil Rights and Justice

The newly redesigned Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama, remembers the past and challenges visitors to continue the struggle. The center provides another pillar to support the struggle for freedom and justice in this country. Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

The Civil Rights Memorial Center (CRMC) in Montgomery, located new the church where MLK preached during the Montgomery Bus boycott, was created in 2005, designed by Maya Lin, famous for the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) created the museum as part of its long-time commitment to social justice.

  

The SPLC has been looked to as a pioneer in Civil Rights advocacy since its founding in 1972. Its had landmark cases against vicious White Supremacy, the KKK, and all forms of  racial injustice since then. SPLC has had its own struggles and some painful inner turmoil, but it is back to the SPCL we idealist liberals have known and loved since Julian Bond served as president. It's  why I continue to support its work. It's new president, Margaret Huang, formerly head of Amnesty International, is committed to its mission and its legal, advocacy, and educational goals.    

The renovated Civil Rights Memorial Center (CRMC), given added weight as the Black Lives Matter movement ricocheted across the country, embodies this mission. It embodies the passion and commitment of Martin Luther King. It emphasizes the civil rights movement "as a continuum, weaving together the US's history of racism with the ongoing activism in pursuit of equity. Like the work of the SPLC itself, the museum challenges visitors to be catalysts for justice." Its new exhibits, videos and hands-on materials sound fascinating and moving, its educational mission as important as SPLC's legal advocacy. 

“The reopening of the CRMC comes precisely at the right moment as our country grapples with efforts to prevent the teaching of an honest history about race and racism in our schools,” said Margaret Huang. "The CRMC and museums across the country can help fill those gaps. I’m thrilled that the CRMC is reopening to once again help visitors understand the truth about the history of civil rights advocacy in this country.”

Martyrs of Civil Rights movement engraved on black granite wheel.

Photo Haraz Ghanbari/AP

The SPLC's recognition of and commitment to lifting up the work of activist and community organizers on the front lines of the fight for racial justice resonates especially with historians of the movement. People like Fannie Lou  Hamer, who fought for voting rights from the ground up in Mississippi when the KKK rode roughshod over the lives of African Americans and lynching darkened the Southern landscape with violent deaths 

The Museum honors them all, and all those who fought and died for the monumental struggle. The names of civil-rights martyrs from 1954 to 1968 are engraved on the Memorial's circular black granite table. It honors those killed, terrorized, and buried in the darkness of tragic loss. It reminds us that the work for equality and justice never stops.  

Tragically, the fight for voting rights, the basic rights in a democracy,  is with us again. It is shattering. That no elected Republicans in Congress will vote for the current voting rights bills passed by the House is criminal; it's treasonous. That's why we need the continuing educational and legal advocacy of the SPLC and its Civil Rights museum, as well as other museums and memorials in Montgomery, and in several other Southern cities.

Martin Luther King's dream remains unfulfilled. It's up to us to make it a reality, to continue the monumental struggle for civil rights for all Americans, "until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." . 

A story of one victim of White Supremacy, Johnnie Mae Chappell.
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2021/02/12/remembering-johnnie-mae-chappell-jim-crow-era-injustice-resonates-period-black-lives-matter

Some Sources:

1.  https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/01/14/redesigned-crmc-encourages-fight-social-justice?

2.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Poverty_Law_Center good descriptive article, with a good list of the cases SPLC has litigated.

3.  https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-alabama-mississippi-museums-20180722-story.html

4.  https://www.goworldtravel.com/tragedy-triumph-civil-rights-sites-alabama/. There are several Civil Rights museums in the US. I'd like to take a tour of all of them. It would be good to take high schoolers on a tour especially now. 

5.  https://www.cleveland.com/travel/2021/04/montgomery-alabama-confronting-americas-painful-past-at-the-legacy-museum-along-the-us-civil-rights-trail.html

6.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/arts/civil-rights-trail.html 

7.  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-16-2022 A brief and important history: 

"Republicans say they oppose the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act because it is an attempt on the part of Democrats to win elections in the future by “nationalizing” them, taking away the right of states to arrange their laws as they wish. Voting rights legislation is a “partisan power grab,” Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) insists. / In fact, there is no constitutional ground for opposing the idea of Congress weighing in on federal elections. The U.S. Constitution establishes that “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.”

There is no historical reason to oppose the idea of voting rights legislation, either. Indeed, Congress weighed in on voting pretty dramatically in 1870, when it amended the Constitution itself for the fifteenth time to guarantee that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In that same amendment, it provided that “[t]he Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” /   It did so, in 1965, with “an act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution,” otherwise known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law designed to protect the right of every American adult to have a say in their government, that is, to vote. The Supreme Court gutted that law in 2013; the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act is designed to bring it back to life."