Activists protest president at new rights museum
JACKSON, Miss. — President Trump’s presence jolted the opening of a civil rights museum Saturday, generating boycotts from some leaders in the movement and small protests by activists as the state’s attempt to confront its racially violent past clashed with more recent divisions wrought by Trump’s presidency.
As the country’s first statesponsored museum on the South’s civil rights struggle opened its doors, Trump gave brief remarks, largely sticking to his prepared script as he hailed the icons of the civil rights movement and rejected the racism and hatred on display in the new museum.
“The civil rights museum records oppression, cruelty and injustice inflicted on the African American community,” said Trump, who had ignored calls to back out of the event by some civil rights veterans. “Here we memorialize the brave men and women who struggled to sacrifice and sacrificed so much so that others might live in freedom.”
Paired with a second museum that aims to document the state’s overall history, the civil rights museum has drawn praise from the movement’s veterans as an honest depiction of Mississippi’s past.
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy, was lynched in 1955 by a white mob in Money, Miss. And one of the most infamous episodes of the civil rights era took place in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights activists — Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman — were killed while trying to register voters in 1964.
Those who made a point of skipping the president’s speech — including Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., the civil rights leader — cited his equivocal remarks after the summer’s racially tinged violence in Charlottesville, Va., and described Trump’s policies toward Mexicans, Muslims and other minorities as an insult to the museum’s purpose.
Amos Brown, the longtime pastor of the historic Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, listed times Trump had failed to speak up for civil rights causes.
“Since Donald Trump did not show up when we needed him to speak a word on behalf of blacks who have experienced police brutality,” Brown said, “he does not deserve to be in Jackson for the celebration of the civil rights museum.”
About 200 protesters assembled along Jackson’s streets, hoping to turn their backs on Trump’s motorcade. But it appeared that the motorcade took a different route.