<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note: If you have not been to or know about the National Civil Rights Museum experience, this is a spoiler alert. Read past the ================ demarcation and you will learn about the reveal for which I was unprepared.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The National Civil Rights Museum is the most surprising museum I have experienced. The museum has a specific story to tell, which it will tell in a particular way, that you must agree to by entering the building. Your progression through the museum follows a single path from room to room. Within a space, you can linger to read wall text, or select objects in digital displays to view video or listen to audio, but the controlling narrative is the path dictated by the museum designers. The only museum I know that is similar in making you attend to a particular story, but not as extreme, is the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The site for the museum is extraordinary. It is the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. The building is true to its day in April 1968 to include two period parked cars at the entrance. A large wreath hangs from the balcony at Room 306. This is not a purpose-built museum designed by a starchitect but a repurposed historic site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An overview of the slave trade, as expected, begins the story. With a specific focus on the Atlantic triangle trade and the Middle Passage, including a frighteningly realistic, instrumented, walk-in display of a ship\u2019s hull from the Middle Passage, the visitors gather before the theatre, the only entrance to the exhibit halls. This anchoring film is the true entrance to the museum. The screen physically moves to reveal an entrance to invite you in to follow into the story. The Civil War is not a major component of the museum \u2014 but the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments are centerpieces. It is largely post-reconstruction and the subsequent backlash of Jim Crow that makes the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are eased into Martin Luther King\u2019s life. His early activism, the jail cell from Birmingham, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Church, but also the decisions and role of the Federal Government. The main theme for the story is Dr. King\u2019s involvement and reinforcement of the non-violent responses to brutality and the passive action, like sit ins, and freedom rides. The physical burned hulk of a Greyhound bus from the first Freedom Rides, is spooky, following in order close on the happier, but still sour, yellow bus with a figure of Rosa Parks seated in the front section. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The museum takes a turn at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Your rise, as if walking up the bridge with pylons and archways on either side and a wide path, Instrumented manequins of state troopers verbally threaten you. Being disassociated from a relation to the space of the building, you are likely unaware that you are walking to the upper floor of the two story motel. The tone of the displays change and we encounter the culture of the sixties with Black Power as a counterweight to Dr. King\u2019s tactics and strategy, the mixing of anti-Vietnam War protests with Civil Rights action, a growing Black American identity, propelled in part through music (a story close to the heart of Memphis). <\/p>\n\n\n\n From the exuberance, youth, and brightness of the sixties counter culture the museum returns to King. A sanitation worker truck becomes the screen for the anchoring video. The mood is increasingly somber. The lighting is yellowish, but not clear. A line of statues march with sandwich board signs declaring: \u201cI am a man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ============================<\/p>\n\n\n\n ============================<\/p>\n\n\n\n I visited on a day that was not crowded. But the passage of people slowed after the section on the Memphis Sanitation Worker\u2019s Strike. Small signs, almost as though they had been prepared on a office laser printer from a Word document, appeared on the walls asking for quiet and respect. The line slowed to a single file, moving towards the hotel balcony. A case holds a poster, a saxophone, and an album cover. It is Ben Branch, \u201cThe Last Request\u201d album, that is contextualized with Dr. Martin Luther King last words requesting, \u201cBen, make sure you play, \u2018Take My Hand Precious Lord\u2019 at the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.\u201d This is the last museum exhibit before the reveal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Without fanfare, or really warning, it becomes apparent, the line is snaking past preserved hotel rooms, towards the balcony. The railing and backside of the wreath come into view. They are Rooms 306, where Dr. Martin Luther King was staying and across the snaking walking path, Room 307 where he died. The rooms are exact replicas – even with the coverlet turned down on one side of the bed in 306. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was not prepared for this. Perhaps, because I said a final goodbye to my wife in our bedroom less than 12 months ago, I am overreacting. As a professor, I had not believed in trigger warnings, but adopted the practice in my teaching. It could do no harm and may help. I knew I had students who had experienced Sandyhook, which made me sensitive to any security drills. I now wish the National Civil Rights Museum would have had a warning or signage for an alternate path. There may have been an alternate path, but I did not see it. In the almost IKEA like \u201cfollow this path or be lost\u201d, through a powerful immersive experience, I left the museum shaken. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Note: If you have not been to or know about the National Civil Rights Museum experience, this is a spoiler alert. Read past the ================ demarcation and you will learn about the reveal for which I was unprepared. The National Civil Rights Museum is the most surprising museum I have experienced. 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