CIVIL RIGHTS CENTER
For more information about the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, go to www.cchrpartnership.org/ or call 404-991-6970. The center, still under construction, is at 100 Ivan Allen Jr. Blvd.
As the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., reopens its doors, Atlanta’s own temple to civil rights nears completion.
Downtown Atlanta’s National Center for Civil and Human Rights is about 75 percent done, according to CEO Doug Shipman, and is on track to be ready for its late May soft opening.
Workers are finishing the interior space, a “water feature” is being built off site to be added later and skilled crews are installing the ventilated facade, made of a synthetic material called Trespa. (The innovative material will help the LEED-certified building conserve energy.)
Over the next few weeks, the exhibits will be loaded in. The displays will concern both the American civil rights movement and similar movements around the globe.
That broader perspective is one aspect that distinguishes Atlanta’s museum from the Memphis attraction, Shipman said.
The Memphis museum was built on the site of the old Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. In some sense, the Memphis museum is a memorial, as well as a teaching facility, Shipman said.
By contrast, Atlanta’s facility is oriented toward contemporary as well as historical issues. “The feel is different,” Shipman said. “A memorial is a sacred space, while ours is future-oriented.”
Nonetheless, the centerpiece of Atlanta’s museum will be King’s personal papers, which were acquired by a group of Atlanta investors for $32 million, and are owned by Morehouse College. Through a partnership with Morehouse and the King estate, Atlanta’s civil rights center will display a rotating selection of those papers in an exhibit area built specifically for that purpose.
Those plans were briefly in jeopardy when the King estate filed a grievance against the Andrew Young Foundation and its executive director Andrea Young, who was also a member of the board of Atlanta’s civil rights center. The estate accused her father, former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, and his foundation, of infringing on the estate’s intellectual property rights by using King’s image and words in documentaries about the civil rights movement.
Former Mayor Shirley Franklin, who is also chair of the civil rights center’s board, said Andrea Young offered to take a leave of absence from the board to avoid drawing the civil rights center into conflict with the King estate.
As a result, said Franklin, “there is no outstanding point of contention for the opening of the center.”
