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Friend,
The images flow across the screen, black-and-white testament to the ravages and triumphs of the civil rights era seared into our collective memory alongside combustible, contemporary scenes of mass protests against the killings of Black people cut down by racist violence.
At the newly redesigned Civil Rights Memorial Center (CRMC) in Montgomery, Alabama, the powerful scenes splash over walls, fill exhibits and illuminate memorials to the past while affirmatively refusing to flinch from the challenges of our current moment.
The CRMC, built and maintained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, reopened this week, two days before the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth on Jan. 15, 1929. The reopening followed a 21-month closure due to the redesign and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conceived prior to the pandemic and given added weight and power as the Black Lives Matter movement ricocheted across the country, the renovated CRMC depicts the civil rights movement not as history but as continuum, weaving together the United States’ history of racism with the ongoing activism in pursuit of equity. Like the work of the SPLC itself, it challenges visitors to be catalysts for justice.
“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, president and CEO of the SPLC. “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.”
Learning has been the point of the CRMC since it opened in 2005 less than a block from the historic church where King served as pastor during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Its new, modernized exhibits reflect the SPLC’s commitment to lifting up the work of activist and community organizers on the front lines of the fight for racial justice today.
From its beginning, the CRMC has served as an interpretive center for the Civil Rights Memorial, which was dedicated in 1989 and created by Vietnam Veterans Memorial designer Maya Lin. Its exhibits have chronicled the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, along with the lives of the civil rights-era martyrs whose names are engraved on the Memorial’s circular, black granite table.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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