One of the National Civil Rights Museum’s central problems is its problem of place. The museum is housed in the Lorraine Motel which, in April of 1968, became the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. In the intervening years King’s image and memory grew into something of a monolith. King became synonymous with the movement, and in many ways he came to embody the movement in a single memory conception. King was seen as the axis around which the movement revolved—he was the pillar of southern resistance and totem of global civil rights. His was an image around which both black and white Americans could rally and reflect idealistically on how far America had come through the Civil Rights Movement, on the fulfillment of the dream. As a result of King’s image and the importance ascribed to him, his place of death manifests many effects of a pilgrimage site. People travel to the place that he was killed because they feel as though it is sacred, set apart from normal time and space by the spiritual importance it maintains in America’s civic religion. Through its history and memory associations the Lorraine Motel occupies a very particular place in people minds, and one that is the source of powerful emotional associations. It has a very specific meaning and that lies in the spiritual and sacred power inherent in the site of a saint’s martyrdom. Interpreting the site or anything housed within the site otherwise thus becomes secondary to fully comprehending and experiencing the site’s specific sacrality.
While the historicity of the museum’s site might serve to augment the museum’s function in some people’s minds, the reality is it precludes a complete and thorough understanding of the movement in all of its various forms. The fundamental problem for the museum is that being housed in the site of King’s death undermines the museum’s stance of objectivity and distorts the museum’s claim of being a “National” Civil Rights Museum. Because of the site’s historical nature and the emotions roused by one’s being in such a site, it is simply impossible to divorce the museum and its exhibits from the image and influence of King, a fact that renders the Museum’s interpretation of the movement, its participants, its goals and aspirations, and its places woefully incomplete.
Ideally, a history museum should be objective, emotionally detached from the history it conveys. A museum should also be even-handed—it should take into account all sides of the history, excluding nothing and including everything historically relevant to the time. It should house historically relevant artifacts that help the museum-going audience conceptualize the period in a historically meaningful way. It should facilitate a feeling of understanding, but not of spiritual fulfillment. On all of these accounts the National Civil Rights Museum fails to qualify as an ideal museum. This is not the problem, of course, as no museum can ever reach these idealistic criteria. The true criterion for a museum, however, is ascribing to the museum’s ideal and striving towards its fulfillment, and the problem with the National Civil Rights Museum is that it makes no attempt at this, rendering it difficult to truly identify it as a museum in the proper sense of the word. The reason for this, ultimately, is that the museum does not value even-handedness and historical detachment. Rather, it cherishes its proximity to King and is happy to disregard the distortions that arise as a result. The museum’s collections manager, Marian Carpenter, even suggested that the museum’s educational properties are augmented by the spiritual presence of King through his place of death. Fostering this connection brings in more guests and creates for the museum and its audience the illusion of education, in reality the fulfillment of what people expect to see and feel when they visit the site of King’s death. Sadly, even if the museum were to endeavor to distance its historical interpretation from the life and work of King, it would be utterly unable to sever the indissoluble tie of place as King’s memory will loom forever over whatever comes to occupy the space, dominating, distorting, and transforming its meaning through his.
The Blog for the Civil Rights Movement class at Rhodes College, Fall 2010
Although the site is specifically tied to the image of Dr. King, I feel that that in no way takes anything from the overall image of the movement. In fact, I feel that housing a museum in a location so closely tied to arguably the most recognizable and prominent leaders of the movement allows people searching for a better knowledge of the movement to immediately feel more comfortable in their surroundings rather than having it at some obscure location.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Marian Carpenter's opinion on the placement of the museum. Honestly, the main draw to the museum is likely the face that it was the place of Martin Luther King Jr's death. I have visited the museum, and think they did a good job of balancing out the focus on MLK Jr's death, the master narrative and the unique story of Memphis. The museum is not wholly focused on the event that took place in the building, but uses it to their advantage throughout the exhibit.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with you guys. The museum does not have more than one or two tiny panels on black nationalist movements or black liberation movement. The south is instead portrayed as the sole place of civil rights struggles. Chicago, Detroit, and Oakland, for example, are completely absent from the museum. The first real exhibit (after the room that consolidates the first 330 years of black activism, including the MOWM) is Brown v. Board. Also, after the museum finally makes it to King's death, the museum largely stops talking about the movement, giving the impression that it ended with King's death. Instead it examines the assassination and the implications of the movement. While this is certainly something that the museum should discuss, the fact remains that there is no further activism discussed, closing offthe movement and reinforcing the master narrative. Though we have been studying the movement in detail and know that the movement extended beyond the South, that it did not begin with Brown or end with the death of King, the general public may be unaware of this. The museum may, thus lead them to a hold a more simplistic conception of the movement, one that does not consider the MOWM or black nationalism part of the movement (one really has to be looking out for these to find any mention of them whatsoever). This, I would argue, is because he museum is designed around King. It is really a sort of pilgrimage, a recreation of King's civil rights journey, ending at the museums highest physical point, room 306, which is a veritable reliquary for King. Emotion rather than objectivty dominates the exhibits. While one may feel more comfortable because of this, it will not lead to a deeper historical understanding of the movement.
ReplyDeleteAt least people get some understanding. How many of us would visit the museum were it not at such a historical site? I would guess not as many. Also, to hold the museum in this place, you do need to recognize King more because the location is associated with him. Perhaps it skews the information a bit, but at least people learn about the movement. Isn't that really the goal of a museum? I can see your points, but I think we have vastly different ideas as to the functions of museums.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you all are right to an extent. The Civil Rights Museum does indeed draw large crowds because of its placement, and as a result many more people learn about the movement. I think that many of my observations and interpretations still stand, but perhaps I was putting it a bit too strongly. I do not personally think that the museum is very good at relaying an accurate portrait of the movement, and I don't think that it's true that no one would go to the civil rights museum if it were not in the place it is. It is difficult to disagree that its placement does attract many more people though, and in this it is a successful museum. Having said this, perhaps we can acknowledge that the museum has certain problems in its interpretation of the movement, and that these probably would not be the same were the building not the site of Dr. King's death.
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