Because we are heading into the Martin Luther King holiday weekend here in the United States. I thought it was an appropriate time to re-run my post on our visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis in the spring of 2024. It turns out that I didn’t write one. With questions of institutionalized violence, resistance, and civil rights in the headlines and in our hearts I still think it’s the right subject for today’s post, so I’m going to have to dig back into my notes/memory to tell the story I should have written then.

The National Civil Rights Museum, built around the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, is rightly described as a sacred space. The exhibits use a brilliant blend of space, light, music and photographs to immerse viewers in familiar stories–the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, the student sit-ins of 1960, and the freedom rides of 1961— and those less well known. (Perhaps only less well known to those of us who were not directly affected by the events or the need for them.) The museum ends with the room in which Dr. King died–the atmosphere when we were there was reverent.

I strongly urge you to visit the museum if you have the chance. I came away both proud of those who fought for civil rights and ashamed that the need had existed.