USA TODAY International Edition
Trump praises ‘true American heroes’ at civil rights museum
President Trump looked somber as Reuben Anderson, Mississippi’s first African-American Supreme Court justice, gave him and a handful of dignitaries a private tour of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum on Saturday.
“I didn’t have the courage to do what they did,” Anderson told the president about the Tougaloo Nine, college students who held a sit-in at the whites-only Jackson Public Library in 1961. “They took their lives in their hands.”
Trump slowly nodded his head and said little as he walked through an exhibit room dedicated to the Freedom Riders, the walls lined with police mugshots of those who were arrested and beaten — and three later murdered — for pushing for voting rights for African Americans in Mississippi in the 1960s.
Trump was uncharacteristically reserved during his visit to Jackson, which brought protests and boycotts. Some state and national leaders — including civil rights veteran U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, who was beaten and jailed in Jackson in 1961 as a Freedom Rider; U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson; former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus; and Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba — refused to attend the event because of Trump.
Trump did not mention the protests or boycotts in his short speech to an invitation-only crowd of dignitaries and civil rights veterans.
“These buildings embody the hope that has lived in the hearts of every American for generations,” Trump said. “The hope for a future that is more just and is more free . ... 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 Martin Luther King Jr. was “a man who I studied and watched and admired for my entire life” and praised James Meredith, for integrating the University of Mississippi, and the Tougaloo Nine. He called America’s civil rights activists “true American heroes.”
Trump was accompanied on his Mississippi visit by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
The president promptly left after his speech, headed back to the airfield and boarded Air Force One. He was in Mississippi for less than an hour and a half.
Former Hinds County Supervisor George Smith said he was pleased to hear Trump’s praise of civil rights veterans. But he’s waiting to hear what Trump says when he returns to Washington and hopes he will “answer the ills we face today, problems with civil rights, education, healthcare — not only black but poor people, especially in a state like Mississippi.”