Civil Rights Museums

• List of National Organizations
• Web Resources
• Search
• Civil Rights Museums

CDs and Tapes Now Available!

As Will The Circle Be Unbroken? demonstrates, those interested in the history of the Civil Rights Movement need not rely on the printed word alone. Civil rights history has also been documented through recorded sound, photographs, artifacts, moving images, and visual art. At the following museums and research centers, the public can learn about civil rights history through both visual and aural means, as well as primary written sources.

	Alabama		North Carolina
	California		South Carolina
	Georgia		Tennessee
	Louisiana		Wisconsin
	Maryland		Washington, D.C.
	New York

---

Alabama

Alabama State University
815 South Jackson Street, Montgomery, AL 36101, (334) 229-4100

An intellectual resource for Montgomery's civil rights activists of the 1950s and '60s, ASU now houses the E.D. Nixon collection, which presents a look into the life and career of this central leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56.

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
520 16th Street North, Birmingham, AL 35203, (205) 328-9696
http://bcri.bham.al.us

Exhibits document the environment of segregation for both black and white Americans circa 1920 to 1940; the conflict and violence that followed the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education; and civil rights struggles such as the lunch counter sit-ins, the Freedom Bus Rise, and other acts of protest.

Across the street, visitors can walk through Kelly-Ingram Park, the central assembly point for civil rights demonstrators attacked by Bull Connor's police dogs and firehoses. Close by is the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Where Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth provided inspirational leadership to citizens challenging segregation and where a Ku Klux Klan bomb claimed the life of four young black girls in 1963.

Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church
454 Dexter Avenue, Montgomery, AL, 36104 (334) 263-3970
Website

This church was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s first church. It played a vital role in the civil rights movement and was at the center of the bus boycott. There is a large mural in the church showing Dr. King's journey from Montgomery to Memphis.

National Voting Rights Museum and Institute
1012 Water Avenue, Selma, AL 35334-2516, (334) 418-0800

Founded, by participants and supporters of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march, this museum commemorates the crossing of the nearby Edumd Pettus Bridge; the people killed in the Voting Rights struggle; and the lawyers who worked for voting rights with photographs and other materials.

Southern Povery Law Center Civil Rights Memorial
400 Washington Avenue, Montgomery, AL 36104

The Civil Rights Memorial chronicles an important part of our continuing struggle against racism. It keeps alive the dreams of those who died during the Civil Rights Movement and inspires those who still dream of a better world.

World Heritage Museum
119 West Jeff Davis Avenue, Montgomery, AL, 36104, (334) 263-7229

Using a display of photographs and newspaper clippings, as well as portraits and memorabilia, the museum records the history of the city's principal civil rights group of the 1950s, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA).

---

California

Stanford University Special Collections Department
Green Library, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6004 (415) 725-1022

Stanford's special collections include an oral history project documenting SCOPE (a SCLC voter registration program) and a radio documentation project called Project South which recorded the people and activities surrounding Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964.

---

Georgia

Albany Civil Rights Museum at Mt. Zion
362 West Whitney Avenue, Albany, GA 31701 (912) 432-1698

Scheduled to open early in 1998 in the restored 1906 Mt. Zion Church in Albany, Georgia, this museum will focus on the grassroots history of the Albany Movement and on the music of the Movement, particularly SNCC Freedom Singers, who made their start in Albany.

APEX (African-American Panoramic Experience) Museum
135 Auburn Avenue, NE, Atlanta GA 30312 (404) 521-2739

APEX's two permanent exhibits interpret primarily local African-American history, including the history of Auburn Avenue, or "Sweet Auburn" — once the heart of Atlanta's black business district and the home turf of young Martin Luther King, Jr.

Atlanta University Center
James P. Brawley Drive SW, Atlanta, GA 30314 (404) 522-8980

Bringing together six historically black colleges (HBCUs)—Clark Atlanta, Morris Brown, Morehouse, Morehouse School of Medicine, Intedenominational Theological Center, and Spelman—the Center includes a library which is shared by all the affiliated colleges and which houses substantial African-American archival material, including the personal papers of civil rights leaders and records of civil rights organizations (such as the Southern Regional Council, SRC's Voter Education Project, the Atlanta Urban League, and the Southern Conference on Human Welfare). Other HCBUs, including Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi, and the Tuskeegee Institute, in Tuskeegee Alabama, also house important archival collections.

Auburn Avenue Library Library on African-American Culture and History
101 Auburn Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA 30303 (404) 730-4001

The library's archives division houses personal papers, photographs, oral histories, and records of organizations and institutions – including a collection of more than one million civil rights news clippings, spanning from 1940 to the 1970s, from the Southern Regional Council.

Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site
526 Auburn Avenue, NE, Atlanta, GA 30312 (404) 331-3919

The centerpieces of the district include King's birthplace, King's gravesite, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King, his father, and his grandfather were pastors. The district also contains the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, which houses King's personal papers, the records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and an oral history collection which includes a project documenting King's life in Montgomery, Alabama; tapes submitted by Hosea Williams; and tapes submitted by SNCC chairman James Foreman. The newest attraction in the district is the National Park Service Visitors Center, which features a museum on King's life.

The Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum
460 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Savannah, GA 31401 (912) 231-8900

This museum uses exhibits, artifacts, photographs, and video and film footage to document the history of Savannah's NAACP-led civil rights movement, as well as the racial segregation that preceded and incited it.

 

---

Louisiana

Amistad Research Center
6823 St. Charles Avenue, Tilton Hall, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118-5698 (504) 865-5535

Among the largest of the nation's repositories of primary source material on African-American history, Amistad's oral history holdings include the Tom Dent Collection (which focuses on civil rights history in Mississippi) and the Gabrielle Edgecomb Collection, which also features interviews of people involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

---

Maryland

NAACP Henry Lee Moon Library and National Civil Rights Archives
4805 Mt. Hope Drive, Baltimore, MD 21215-3297 (410) 358-8900

The library of the NAACP's headquarters has issues of Crisis from 1910 onward; rare volumes and first editions by African-American Authors and intellectuals; photographs that trace the organization's roots, efforts, and leaders; and a wealth of other material about the NAACP.

---

New York

Columbia University Oral History Research Office
Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 (212) 854-2273

The "granddaddy of oral history collections in the country," according to Will the Circle Be Unbroken? producer George King, Columbia's extensive civil rights-related holdings include the Eisenhower Project–a federally initiated undertaking which involved interviewing the (most often) local white political elites of Little Rock, Arkansas about the integration of Central High School.

Arthur Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture
New Public Library, 135th Street at Lenox Avenue, Manhattan, NY 10037 (212) 491-2200

One of world's most comprehensive archives documenting the history and culture of the African diaspora, the Schomberg's holdings date back to 8th or 9th century African artifacts and range forward to the present. Those interested in civil rights history will find relevant moving images, recorded sound, photographs, prints, art, artifacts, manuscripts, and rare books.

---

North Carolina

Greensboro Historical Museum
130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro, NC 27101 (910) 373-2043

This museum documents the historic February 1960 sit-in at the Woolworth lunch counter through large photographic murals and artifacts. In the old Woolworth building itself, plans have been drafted for an International Civil Rights Center and Museum, schedule to open in February 2000. The planned museum will include the actual lunch counter as well as a comprehensive depiction of the civil rights struggle. Call Sit-In Movement, Inc. at (910) 274-9199 for more information.

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill — The Southern Oral History Collection with the Southern Historical Collection
Wilson, Library, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890 (919) 962-1345

UNC's collection features over 1,500 interviews with a diverse range of people living in the Southeast. About a quarter of the collection is estimated to relate directly or indirectly to the Civil Rights Movement. Indexes of the collection are available on request.

---

South Carolina

Avery Research Center for African-American History and Culture
College of Charleston, 125 Bull Street, Charleston, SC (803) 792-5742

Of its 125 manuscript collections documenting the history and culture of African Americans in Charleston and the state's low country, the Avery Center has five submitted by civil rights activists in Charleston: the Esau Jenkins papers, the Bernice Robinson papers, the Ruby Cornwell collection, the Isiah Bennett collection, and the J. Arthur Brown collection.

 

---

Tennessee

Highlander Research and Education Center
1959 Highlander Way, New Market, TN 37820 (423) 9333-3433
Web information

The Highlander Center has convened many meetings of grassroots leaders and social activists (including civil rights activists) since the 1930s. Taped recordings of these assemblies are now housed at the Center as are recordings of civil rights songs.

National Civil Rights Museum
450 Mulberry Street, Memphis, TN 38103 (901) 561-9699

Erected on the site of the motel where Dr. King was assassinated, the museum uses vignettes to highlight such events as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the attempt to prevent school desegregation in Little Rock, the battle to integrate Ole Miss, and Freedom Summer.

---

Wisconsin

State Historical Society of Wisconsin
816 State Street, Madison, WI 53703 (608) 264-6535

Because of a concerted effort to build up a civil rights collection, the Society's library contains the archives of CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality), materials on the Angela Davis trial, and documents concerning SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The oral history collection includes taped recordings of Little Rock, Arkansas local during the integration of Central High School, fieldworkers involved in Operation Freedom in Mississippi in 1962, SNCC conferences, and radio broadcasts conducted by Anne and Carl Braden.

 

---

Washington, D.C.

Anacostia Museum, Smithsonian Institution and the Center for African American History and Culture
Anacostia: 1901 Fort Place, SE, Washington, DC 20020 (202) 287-3369
Center: 900 Jefferson Drive, SW, Rm. 1130, Washington, DC 20020 (202) 357-4500

A part of the Smithsonian Institution, Anacostia mounts changing exhibitions that focus on black history and urban issues of the upper south—the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, maryland, and Washington, DC. It often presents exhibits in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Center for African American History and Culture. The Center also has its own gallery in the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building.

Howard University—The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center
500 Howard Place, Howard University, Washington, DC 20059 (202) 806-7480

The Moorland-Spingarn Center holds an oral history collection focusing on African Americans, with considerable material devoted to the Civil Rights Movement. Activists involved with SNCC, SCLC, NAACP, the Urban League, and SRC are among those interviewed.

[Top of Page]