Mississippi museums explore Klan and slavery
JACKSON, Miss. — In the 1950s and ’60s, segregationist whites waved Confederate flags and slapped defiant bumper stickers on cars declaring Mississippi “the most lied about state in the Union.”
Those were ways of defiantly pushing back against African-Americans who dared challenge racial oppression, and taking a jab at journalists covering the civil rights movement.
Decades later, as Mississippi marks its bicentennial, the state is getting an unflinching look at its complex, often brutal past in two history museums, complete with displays of slave chains, Ku Klux Klan robes and graphic photos of lynchings and firebombings.
The Museum of Mississippi History takes a 15,000year view, from the Stone Age through modern times. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum concentrates on a shorter, but intense span, from 1945 to 1976.
They open Saturday, the day before the 200th anniversary of Mississippi becoming the 20th state.
The two distinct museums under a single roof are both funded by state tax dollars and private donations. Officials insist the museums aren’t intended to be “separate-but-equal” in a state where that phrase was invoked to maintain segregated school systems for whites and blacks that were separate and distinctly unequal.
“We are telling a much longer story in the Museum of Mississippi History, a much deeper story in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum,” said Katie Blount, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “We want everybody to walk in one door, side by side, to learn all of our state’s stories.”
The general history museum depicts Native American culture, European settlement, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction. It examines natural disasters, including the Mississippi River flood in 1927 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It also has only-in-Mississippi items such as the crown Mary Ann Mobley wore as Miss America 1959.
The museums’ opening caps a yearlong bicentennial commemoration. Some events celebrated Mississippi’s success at producing influential authors and musicians, such as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, B.B. King and Elvis Presley. Others took a critical look slavery and segregation.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Donald Trump plans to visit Mississippi for the state’s bicentennial and to help open the two museums.
Activists are threatening to boycott or protest Trump’s participation. Sanders said that would be “very sad.”