Learning from the Germans by Susan Neiman

Author:Susan Neiman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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For nearly forty years Mississippi activists had demanded a museum in Jackson, the state capital, that would tell the story of the local civil rights movement. It was finally opened in December 2017, just in time to fit into the celebrations of the Mississippi Bicentennial. The construction of the museum, which received $90 million in state funding, came at a price: Governor Phil Bryant and the legislature insisted that a museum devoted to the entire history of the state be built next to the civil rights museum. Since it was Bryant who initiated Confederate Heritage Month, expectations for the history museum were very low. Surely it would glorify the story white Mississippi prefers to tell about itself, a story of well-mannered men and gracious ladies, a culture more kind and more civilized than any you can find up north. Thoughtful Mississippians sighed in anticipation. They had no choice but to accept the Museum of Mississippi History as the price of the civil rights museum, whose opening was eagerly awaited.

The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum is indeed a triumph. It tells the story of the movement in each of Mississippi’s communities, with inventive and challenging exhibits showing the best that contemporary museum design can offer. It’s easy to spend hours there, sunk in stories of those heroes who risked and sometimes lost their lives in the struggle for justice. And justice is done to Medgar Evers, James Meredith, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and many others whose names resound less loudly in the history books. In addition to a trove of interviews and films, the artifacts can be chilling: a charred cross, a re-created jail cell, shards of glass from a bombed-out church, the rifle that killed Medgar Evers. I left the museum feeling lightened and raised. Though I knew many of the stories, it was impossible not to be inspired by the courage and wisdom that is honored there.

Yet the museum has few surprises for anyone who has seen the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis or the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. Mississippi’s museum is no better or worse than these, and all three are important. What is truly surprising is the Museum of Mississippi History. Instead of the whitewashed story so many had expected, the museum is organized around the heading “One Mississippi, Many Stories.” It begins with a gallery devoted to the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, sparing few details about the laws that forced them to abandon their homes. The director, Rachel Myers, is determined to show what Mississippi looked like from the perspective of Native Americans, enslaved people, women, and others whose stories are often obscured. “It’s the only way to do justice to the richness of Mississippi,” she said, smiling innocently. You can compare the dwellings of wealthy planters, yeoman farmers, and enslaved people, all of whose homes have been carefully reconstructed. There is, to be sure, an exhibit of the many flags used during

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