When the National Center for Civil and Human Rights first opened in June 2014, Atlanta proclaimed its rightful place in history as a place that championed civil and human rights. The development of the Center helped solidify Atlanta’s identity on the global landscape.
The National Center for Civil and Human Rights is undergoing a major expansion, realizing the building of two wings originally envisioned for the attraction, but were put on pause for financial reasons.
The Center, which has been closed since January, will reopen Nov. 8 with its two new wings — the Arthur M. Blank Inspiration Hall on the west side of the original attraction and the Shirley Clarke Franklin Pavilion on the east side of the building. A thank you ribbon-cutting will be held on Nov. 4.
The $56.6 million expansion will add 24,000 square feet – a 50 percent expansion of the original building’s 42,000 square feet. The Center ended up raising $57.9 million — $1.3 million above its earlier goal.
Atlanta’s role in the movement will be even more front-and-center in the expanded attraction.
Jill Savitt, president and CEO of the Center, and Kama Pierce, the chief program officer, took a group of journalists on a hard hat tour of the new attraction, pointing out how the changes between the expanded Center and the original.
The biggest symbolic and physical change will be the King Gallery, which features items from the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. collection. The King Gallery is being moved from the lower level to the main level in the space that used to house the Center’s gift store.
Savitt said the King Gallery now “will be a non-negotiable part of everyone’s visit” as a featured centerpiece of the museum. It will recreate King’s home office with family photos contributed by Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. One feature will be an interactive experience with a telephone on King’s desk, where people can listen to 10 people on hypothetical phone calls with the civil rights leader.
Bernice King, CEO of the King Center, will also serve as the first guest curator of the King Gallery. Exhibits will be switched out twice a year – before the national King holiday in January and before Juneteenth on June 19.
Savitt said the King Gallery will now be “the heartbeat of the building,” and she also thanked the King Center for its close partnership. Savitt said the goal will be to lift King’s role as a human being and not just as an icon.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Bernice King said Monday of the expanded Center and the new King Gallery.
That’s only one way Atlanta’s story will be more prominent.
“One of the concerns was that we didn’t celebrate Atlantans enough,” said Savitt, adding that there will be an Atlanta Alcove featuring local leaders involved in the movement. “Atlanta was the brain trust of the civil rights movement.”
The old televisions featuring the voices of segregationists from the 1950s and 1960s will return, as well as the videos about Atlanta’s hosting of the 1965 dinner honoring King as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the March on Washington and the King funeral.
The popular lunch counter experience will also double, so people won’t have to wait as long to sit at a counter with headphones, replicating attacks on nonviolent protesters.
Some changes: There will no longer be the replica of the steps at the Lorraine Hotel; there will be a Black Power – White Rage exhibit; there will be spaces for reflection; there will be at least one juke box; and there will be prompts to help visitors “tap their own power to influence the world.” Savitt said.
One of the biggest additions will be the Center’s efforts to appeal to younger audiences. The Children’s experience, which will open in April, will give young people a chance to teleport to a secret headquarters for change agents. Given the proximity of the Center to the World of Coke and the Georgia Aquarium, the Center hopes to attract younger visitors and increase membership with its offerings to children.
The human rights portion of the Center will also be transformed into an “Everyone Everywhere” attraction featuring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There will no longer be a “Wall of Shame” with life-size images of Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.
Instead, there will be a “A Mile in My Shoes,” set up like a shoe store where visitors can put on the shoes of heroes while hearing their stories.
“It is very victory-focused,” said Savitt, adding that there’s a new school of thought to provide messages of hope. “We’ve adopted the hope-based communication approach.”
Kama Pierce, who helped curate exhibits in the expanded Center, said history shows periods of progress and periods of backlash.
A new gallery – “Broken Promises” – will look at the era of Reconstruction after the Civil War. This exhibit will open in December and will feature the Without Sanctuary collection.
It will showcase three cities that experienced a backlash: Wilmington, N.C., Atlanta and Tulsa. It will also highlight Atlanta’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). “These schools educated the new Black middle class,” Pierce said.
The expanded Center will also have a Special Exhibitions Gallery for traveling exhibits, giving people a reason to return on a regular basis.
In fact, much of the expansion will be geared to helping the Center generate more revenue. The Franklin Pavilion will double the amount of event space to 10,000 square feet. The flexible event space will have retractable walls with the ability to be used as classrooms.
Savitt said the Center hopes to have at least 200,000 visitors a year. The events space can be rented out, providing another source of revenue. And there will be a café and store that should help raise money. The extra money raised during the campaign will help build out offices for the Center’s staff, which has never been on the premises.
For Savitt, it’s all about creating “a community of conscience” in Atlanta and beyond.
“We are proud of this story because it represents the very best of our country,” Savitt said. “This community has been the wind in our sales. We are a civil rights city.”
Click here for Kelly Jordan’s retrospective of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.
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