Civil Rights Museum - Part 2

As a follow-up to Monday's post here's a sampling of some of the historic content curated at the Nation Civil Rights Museum located in Memphis, Tennessee.  

The museum complex is situated in downtown Memphis and is associated with the South Main Arts District.  The site includes the Lorraine Motel and the buildings across the way on 422 Main Street.  On Main Street is the rooming house from which James Earl Ray stalked and later assassinated Martin Luther King.     

All the properties, with the exception of the motel, are owned by the Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation.  The State of Tennessee owns the motel.

The museum houses a vast collection of interactive media, exhibits, oral and written histories and artifacts.  Visitors follow a self-guided experience through five centuries of history spanning the slave trade, racial segregation under Jim Crow, the civil rights movement to modern time.  In 2016 it became a Smithsonian Affiliate. 

I haven't thought about this much since I ceased traveling to Providence, RI on business. The rum trade became The Golden Triangle between New England, the West Indies, and the African Gold Coast that maintained the prosperity of the northern colonies throughout the eighteenth century.  In this triangular trade, molasses was sent to New England, rum to Africa, and slaves to the West Indies. 

One enslaved worked was expected to produce 200 pounds of sugar a year, yielding up to 110+ gallons of molasses eventually distilled into 73.5 gallons of rum.  Simple economics.

City bus...

Actual school song, Central High School Little Rock, Arkansas...

View from the balcony where Martin Luther King was shot in the direction of the rooming house from which James Earl Ray shot King...

Building and bathroom (open window on the right) from where the killing shot originated...

The museum collection includes the weapon, bullet and autopsy report too.  Anything tagged "green" is original....

Nothing in this museum is white washed (pun intended).  The grim and stark truths on display are in your face.  And while some of my acquaintances would casually dismiss this is "woke culture" it's actually history.  And sometimes history can be uncomfortable.....