Over spring break, I visited Birmingham, Alabama and
Jackson, Mississippi. I had never been to either of these cities in the past,
though I had heard about them time and time again in history classes. One of
the stops that I made while in each of these cities was to their civil rights
museums, because I wanted to see the ways in which these cities remembered
their past as well as the ways in which they displayed this past to the public.
Both museums had a number of strengths, but I still felt that they had a number
of areas that they could improve upon.
Both museums took a chronological
approach to telling the story of the civil rights movement, starting on the
continent of Africa and the intercontinental slave trade and moving to present
day. However, I was dissatisfied with the way in which the museum in Jackson
ended. After the lengthy displays and descriptions of the civil rights events
in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the museum ended very abruptly. It might have
mentioned two events that took place in the 1980s, as well as the election of
Nelson Mandela in South Africa (which seemed kind of out of place since nearly
the entire museum up to that point had focused on the U.S.). What the Jackson
museum did not do was connect the civil rights movement to what we see today, which
seemed like a shame to me, as there are clear parallels between the work of
civil rights leaders in the 1960s that they praised and highlighted so much and
the world that we live in today. Instead, the museum almost presented this
narrative that the civil rights movement ended around 1970 and that no new
developments have taken place since. This is probably because connecting any
more recent events gets into modern day politics, and the museum must appeal to
a wide audience to attract visitors, but it feels like a waste to have such a
great museum that presents stories and people that are often overlooked in the
civil rights movement and end it with almost nothing. The Jackson museum did
not fall prey to the narrative that Martin Luther King Jr. was the sole leader
of the civil rights movement, but it did fall into the trap that the civil
rights movement, and all that its leaders and activists stood for, is over and
done.
This is really interesting! I'm wondering why and more importantly how they could allow something like this to happen. Maybe the "people in charge" believe that the CRM and what it fought for is over because of how many of us have been taught. Or maybe it is because of them not wanting to get into modern day politics, which is sad because the truth is more important.
ReplyDelete