Mississippi is the only state to publicly fund a civil rights museum

Evidence

These forces have found expression, too, in the emergence of new institutions such as the recently opened Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, and the striking National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum—the first and only civil rights museum publicly funded by a state—unflinchingly tells the story of the brutality of white supremacy, notably including the role that white Christian churches played in justifying and enforcing segregation and resisting civil rights for African Americans. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice stands as a stark witness to the more than 4,400 African Americans who were lynched between 1877 and 1950. Notably, it is within sight of the Alabama Statehouse, where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office as president of the Confederate States of America, with Reverend Basil Manly Sr. at his side, in 1861. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 47

Categorization

• SHARE: The detail that the nation’s only state-funded civil rights museum is in Mississippi — the state that resisted integration most — is a pointed ironies-of-history fact worth sharing.
• XREF: Links to the memorial/monument theme from The New Crusades passages on tearing down deceitful monuments and truthful history.