Veda Ajamu works at the National Civil Rights Museum and is used to walking by meaningful reminders of an era that changed the course of American history. Now she has an even more personal connection to the space.
“What we are looking at here - artifacts that I once held when I was advocating for freedom and justice for my brother,” she says, standing in front an exhibit and pointing to a sign that reads ‘Clemency Now’ in bold, black lettering.
The display tells the story of her brother, Robert Shipp, who in 1994 – at the age of 21 – was sentenced to life for a nonviolent drug offense. The judge overseeing his case at the time opposed handing down such a harsh sentence. But federal mandatory minimum guidelines, enacted as part of the politically-popular, tough on crime push in the 1980s and ‘90s, left no other options.
Ajamu still tears up talking about it.
“Because I think about the time that he lost,” she says. “But then, the other side of it, I see gratitude.”
Gratitude because after serving almost 26 years, Shipp was released from prison in 2019 as a result of national sentencing reforms. Throughout his detention, Ajamu worked to shed light on his case, mass incarceration and what she says are disproportionate punishments.
She hopes others see themselves in her – an individual moved to action for a cause.
“I want people to take away that there’s sacrifice,” she says. “I want people to take away that there’s a path forward.”
Examples of contemporary advocates, like Ajamu, are now a feature of the museum, part of a $38 million dollar redesign project that re-opened earlier this year.
“It’s not just a civil rights’ celebrity story. It’s about everyday people, really just putting one foot in front of the other and doing the best that they can,” says Russ Wigginton, the museum’s president. “We feel like that’s how all of us can relate and connect.”
More than 200,000 people visited the National Civil Rights
Museum last year, which for decades has been an authority on the movement’s history – from slavery to desegregation to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. Its core is built around that somber snapshot of history – the Lorraine Motel balcony where he was fatally shot.
Across the street is the former rooming house where King’s killer took aim. Today, it’s called the Legacy Building and is the space that underwent the multi-year modernization.
Wigginton says the overarching goal of the update is for newer generations to connect the past with the present.
“When they think about the question: ‘What happened to the movement after Dr. King died?’ There’s an answer, and the answer is the ongoing civil and human rights movement of the last 50-plus years,” he says.
The revamped building includes an exhibit on the Poor People’s Campaign, the rise of Black political representation and movements like Black Lives Matter and the 2020 racial justice protests.
One central gallery builds on themes of inequality from King’s final book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”
The installations spotlight present-day disparities in areas like housing, income and education. Ryan Jones, the museum’s director of history and interpretation, says they illustrate a throughline from the movement’s values and legislative gains during the 1950s and ‘60s to today’s progress and stagnation.
“It’s one thing to be able to be educated in a once segregated school,” he says. “But now you’re looking at what types of things that you’re being taught. Is African American history being taught? Are you getting the same opportunities in higher education?”
Many of these issues are currently being debated in the public square. Wigginton says it’s critical for the museum’s mission to be nonpartisan and welcoming to all, but it doesn’t shrink from topics that might provoke discomfort.
“We try to make sure wherever you are on the comfort barometer, you at least feel like this is a place that is going to be supportive and be accurate in its complicated storytelling about this American experiment,” he says.
One aspect of the original Legacy Building remains: the preserved bathroom and window where James Earl Ray is believed to have fired the fatal shot.
Jones says the exhibit now includes decades of additional scholarship and research. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, for example, viewed King as a threat at the time of his death. De-classified files revealing heavy FBI surveillance have, for King’s family and others, fed enduring doubts that Ray acted alone, despite official findings to the contrary.
“What the museum wanted to do was to address those lingering questions in the most in-depth way possible and to provide the visitor a full comprehensive story as to what took place,” Jones says.
Another lingering question: what comes next? Wigginton says the museum’s expansion comes at a time when foundational achievements of the civil rights era are being tested and, in some cases, rolled back. Ultimately though, he wants people to leave inspired.
“Coretta Scott King reminded us that every generation has to sort of establish its own rules around what it means to be free,” Wigginton says.
“Part of what we're doing in all of these stories is to…capture the imagination, capture the human spirit and help people connect themselves to something that's bigger than themselves,” he says.
