IN MISS., DON DISS
record on civil rights “abysmal,” urged Trump not to attend.
Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and other black lawmakers declined an invitation due to the President’s appearance.
Lewis (below) and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) called Trump being at the opening an “insult” and said Trump has deepened racial divides in the country.
Thompson and Lewis noted Trump’s blaming of “both sides” for deadly violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the summer.
Trump has also criticized NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem in protest of racism and police brutality directed at AfricanAmerican men.
The President has been praised by former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke and members of the alt-right, which often aligns with white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements.
The national president of the NAACP and the mayor of Jackson also skipped the museum opening. They said they can’t share a stage with Trump because of his “pompous disregard” for the values embodied by the civil rights movement. The exhibits in the museum include thousands of artifacts, including the Money, Miss., grocery store door that 14-year-old Emmett Till walked out of in 1955, before being lynched for flirting with a white woman.
There are burned crosses, a recreated jail cell, tear-gas canisters and the rifle used to shoot civil rights activist Medgar Evers in 1963.
Trump praised Evers, a World War II veteran, in his remarks for fighting for the “same rights and freedoms that he had defended in the war.”
Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers, was in the audience.
“Here we memorialize the brave men and women who struggled to sacrifice and sacrifice so much so that others might live in freedom,” Trump said.