Museums Take up Civil Rights, Immigration Issues and Their History
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Do the issues of civil rights and immigration intersect? According to the mission of the Civil Rights Sites of Conscience Network, they do. The group of museums from the Southeast recently met over four days in Charlotte. Emily Zimmern, president and CEO of the host Levine Museum of the New South, lamented “what passes as dialogue” in the immigration debate, words that don’t acknowledge “the long sweep of history.” But she was hopeful that the stand-off can be advanced with informed community engagement. “That’s what museums do.”
At the Levine, that means pairing African-American and Hispanic groups to discuss two museum exhibits: “Courage,” which explores the Carolina roots of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed segregated schools, and “Para Todos Los Niño,” which chronicles the landmark legal anti-discrimination struggles of Latino families in Southern California almost 10 years before Brown. Another program aimed at high school and college students will ask: “Where is courage needed today?”…
