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Week 8: And Justice For All
Fifty-Four years ago this week, NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his home in Jackson, MS. Two trials of Evers' assassin, Byron De La Beckwith, ended in hung juries in 1964.
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Week 7: Quality Education
Quality education has been a long established value in the civil rights movement. As early as the nineteenth century there have been cases of families challenging education inequity in their communities.
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Week 6: Better Jobs = Better Society
On August 28, 1963 thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington. Although the march would later become known for Dr. King's famous “I Have a Dream” speech, the rallying cry that…
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Week 5: Poverty: A Moral Dilemma
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. launched a new phase of the Civil Rights Movement focused on economic justice. While the Movement had won victories in desegregation and voting rights, King said it had done little…
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Week 4: Fair Housing in a Beloved Community
Dr. King's Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international…
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Week 3: A Threat to Justice
From a Birmingham jail, Dr. King once wrote, “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and when they fail in this purpose, they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social…
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Week 2: What is Peace?
At the National Civil Rights Museum, we have discussed the definition of peace. While it is hard to define, we realize that peace is more than the absence of war and violence.
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Week 1 of 50: No Justice. No Peace. Know Justice. Know Peace.
Welcome to 50 Weeks of Actions! You have pledged to join us in improving our communities through peace and direct action. Over the next 50 weeks, we will explore our MLK50 platforms: poverty, better jobs & higher…
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What is your story?
As part of the MLK50 commemoration, the National Civil Rights Museum wants to collect your stories on Dr. King, his life, his death, and his legacy. As a historical museum, it is important to for us to capture not only…
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Jamara’s Story
My parents were teenagers in 1968. My father was a 14 years old Memphian and recounts to me April 4th as if it happened yesterday. He says the tension was palpable in the city.
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MLK50 – Where Do We Go From Here?
The United States observes only ten national holidays. Three of those days celebrate individuals: Christopher Columbus Day honors a man who in our civil mythology discovered the Americas, but in reality, there were…
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When A City Fails to Hear
The July 10, 2016, protest that shut down the Hernando DeSoto Bridge threw solidarity on the streets of Memphis into sharp relief. The city hadn’t seen spontaneous support for a cause on that scale for nearly half a…