Museum tracing the history of the civil rights movement is built around the former Lorraine Motel, which was the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
General Information
Closed Tuesdays
Last admission: 5:00pm
Seniors (65+): $23
College Students: $23
Children (ages 5–17): $22
How to Get There
From Downtown Memphis (1 mi): Head south on Main Street or Front Street through downtown Memphis, continue toward the South Main Historic Arts District, and follow signs to the National Civil Rights Museum at 450 Mulberry St., located at the former Lorraine Motel.
The National Civil Rights Museum is a complex of museums and historic buildings in Memphis, Tennessee; its exhibits trace the history of the civil rights movement in the United States from the 17th century to the present. The museum is built around the former Lorraine Motel, which was the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968; King died at St. Joseph's Hospital. Two other buildings and their adjacent property, also connected with the King assassination, have been acquired as part of the museum complex.
The museum reopened in 2014 after renovations that increased the number of multi-media and interactive exhibits, including numerous short movies to enhance features. The museum is owned and operated by the Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation, based in Memphis. The Lorraine Motel is owned by the Tennessee State Museum and leased long term to the Foundation to operate as part of the museum complex. In 2016, the museum was honored by becoming a Smithsonian Affiliate museum. It is also a contributing property to the South Main Street Historic District of the National Register of Historic Places.
The museum was dedicated on July 4, 1991, and officially opened to the public on September 28, 1991.
The main museum closed in November 2012 for a $27.5 million renovation, to include changes to exhibits and upgrades to building systems. The exhibits were updated for historical accuracy and to add to their evocative power; the work was guided by a group of recognized civil rights scholars. Many of the museum's most popular exhibits did not change, such as Room 306 (where King was staying when he died), the replica sanitation truck (King came to Memphis to support an AFSCME sanitation workers' strike), and the replica of the bus Rosa Parks rode in Montgomery, Alabama, before initiating the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-1956. The original bus resides at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
In the 2014 reopening, a major new exhibit featured is a replica of the U.S. Supreme Court room where oral argument was heard in 1954 in the seminal Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. This was a major victory for the civil rights movement. The museum has several interactive kiosks where patrons can access audio, images, text and video about the full civil rights movement. Visitors can search for text based on event, location, or theme. Many exhibits now feature "listening stations" where patrons with headphones can hear audio about the exhibit they are seeing; one features the voice of Malcolm X in a debate. More than 40 new short films throughout the museum also enhance the effect of the exhibits.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Beale Street" which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
