ATLANTA — Fifty years ago, American civil rights activists fought for equality through nonviolent demonstrations and protests.
And as the same kinds of human rights campaigns take place around the world today, the Center for Civil and Human Rights inAtlanta, which celebrated its first anniversary on Tuesday, brings visitors face-to-face with this ongoing battle.
“It’s more than a civil rights museum,” said interim CEO Deborah Richardson. “The exhibits have relevance to what’s happening in the world right now. It gives you a context for what we’re seeing in the news today. We didn’t just wake up and get to this place as a country.”
Thousands of visitors toured the Center’s three galleries in its first year, including more than 50,000 students.
“It puts the American Civil Rights Movement in the context of these larger global issues going on today,” said Jill Savitt,curator of the Human Rights exhibit.
Tony Award winning playwright George C. Wolfe curated the interactive exhibit on the Civil Rights Movement. “He describes the Civil Rights gallery as a play that you walk through,” Richardson said. “So he intends for it to be an emotional experience for you.”
The exhibit includes a sit-in simulation, where visitors can take a seat at a diner counter and experience the taunting and aggression faced by activists who participated in sit-ins across the county.
“Students read about the Movement, but here you get to experience it,” Richardson said. “What was it really like to a part of the movement? What it would have been like to be one of that crowd in the March on Washington?”
The museum also features a rotating exhibit on Martin Luther King Jr., displaying the civil rights leader’s personal papers.
“That particular exhibit is the man behind the movement – what was he like as a father, as a husband, as a person – versus being this iconic leader,” Richardson said.
Savitt, who has worked as a human rights advocate for 20 years, said building the Center in Atlanta is significant, as the city is the modern era’s birthplace of rights in America.
“You’ve got Philadelphia, Boston and of course Washington that are associated with governmental rights, but Atlanta is really a symbol of what happens when citizens come together and work together to try to change policies that are really hard to change.”
Richardson said in the Center’s first year, they had to market through word of mouth. But she said visitor feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
And she said the Center achieved its mission – to become a place where human rights are discussed daily. “We want people to not just come here and to experience this as a visit, but also to leave both informed, inspired and ready for action,” she said.
