Credit Memphis Travel
National Civil Rights Museum
Student groups exploring historic Memphis, Tennessee, must be sure their agenda includes a stop at the National Civil Rights Museum, established in 1991 at the former Lorraine Motel, where beloved civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
A recent $27.5 million renovation to this premier institution supplemented an already robust assemblage with more than 40 new films, oral histories and interactive media features and freshened the Museum with an updated, modern design reminding visitors of its charge to keep civil rights issues moving forward, while a 7,000-pound bronze signature statue, “Movement to Overcome”, featured in front of the grand staircase in the new lobby stands as a monument to the struggles of previous generations, “lest we forget”.
Through a comprehensive series of interactive exhibits including A Culture of Resistance, The Rise of Jim Crow, World in Transition, Join the Movement and The King’s Last Hours, fascinating historic collections and a range of dynamic speakers and special events, a tour of the National Civil Rights Museum leads groups on an enlightening and immersive journey through five centuries of history, from the dawn of the resistance and through the Civil War and reconstruction to significant events of the late twentieth century that inspired people around the world to rise, step away from an oppressive heritage of stolen futures and mournful predisposition, shake off the heavy chains of segregation and stand for equality.
