Historical objects and artifacts — even if ordinary — reach through time to connect us with the past in a tangible way, bringing stories to life that sometimes mere words cannot. Seeing, and perhaps even touching, these physical remnants can open the door to extraordinary stories about the Civil Rights Movement and the people who participated.
Luckily, many significant items have been preserved at museums and historic sites along the U.S. Civil Rights Trail and are on exhibit for visitors and scholars to examine and appreciate. Here are five that should not be missed.
The Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection
National Center for Civil and Human Rights
Atlanta
Perhaps no person is more intimately associated with the Civil Rights Movement than Martin Luther King Jr., who before his assassination in 1968 became the movement’s most visible figure. King began his studies at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, and many of his papers (and other objects) collected by Morehouse will be on display in a new first-floor exhibit at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. In addition to King’s writings, the collection includes one of King’s desks and other items, along with a large-scale art installation titled “Fragments,” a 38-foot stretch of 50 metal panels upon which King’s words have been incised and illuminated.
“We had the King papers on our basement floor, and it was kind of our cornerstone,” said Nicole Moore, director for education at the center. “It was a beautiful space, but it was very quiet and seemed very solemn. Especially for young people today, when they think about Dr. King, they really think about this untouchable icon. But he was a man; he was a father; he was a husband. And so we’re bringing that story to life, making him more approachable, making them understand that here is this man that did extraordinary things, but he was just a man. We’ll have people really understand Dr. King as a human being and then as a leader. And I think that’s what’s important so that when we tell people you can be an agent of change and you too can go on and do great things.”
The center will reopen in fall of 2025.
Lancaster Papers
Robert Russa Moton Museum
Farmville, Virginia
Barbara Johns was 16 years old when she encouraged her classmates to protest inferior facilities by walking out of Robert Russa Moton High School in 1951. This student-led strike produced three fourths of the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision desegregating U.S. schools. Rather than comply, Prince Edward County closed their public schools from 1959 to 1964, when another court decision forced integration. The former school is now a National Historic Landmark where visitors can learn about the Civil Rights Movement that was sparked by the student action.
“The museum interprets that history,” said Leah Brown, associate director for education and collections. “We talk about community — who was here, who had to leave. The Moton Museum galleries are unique because they talk about multiple perspectives. The people that wanted to keep segregation, the people that wanted to get rid of segregation — they’re all in these galleries.”
John Lancaster was the president of Moton’s PTA and was fired from his county job in retaliation. Last summer, Lancaster’s family donated his papers, including the PTA ledger, which details how the Black community worked together to lobby for a new and safe school, and to raise funds for its construction. The ledger contains minutes and committee priorities and serves as a record of how the Black community of Prince Edward and Farmville advocated for additional materials in the hope of achieve equal education opportunities for their children. It also highlights aspects of community resistance and political connections with the NAACP and throughout the state.
The museum has also created a website.
“It gives you all the details, all the quotes, more photographs and videos to explain who was here and what was happening and the choices that were made, and then the consequences of those choices,” said Brown.
Little Rock Nine Telegram
Eisenhower Presidential Library
Abilene, Kansas
In September 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and sent U.S. Army troops to the scene to personally guard the “Little Rock Nine,” the first African Americans to attend Little Rock’s Central High.
“We believe that freedom and equality with which all men are endowed at birth can be maintained only through freedom and equality of opportunity for self-development, growth and purposeful citizenship.” These words were sent to Eisenhower by the parents of those nine students, thanking him for his efforts in protecting their children.
The bright pink telegram is only one of the civil rights artifacts on display at Abilene’s Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum.
“Eisenhower, of course, is president from 1953 to 1961, and I think he sometimes maybe gets a little bit overlooked as a president who was very important to the Civil Rights Movement,” said Todd Arrington, director of the facility. “We tend to think of President Kennedy and President Johnson, but in fact, Eisenhower was president during a number of very important events and crises such as when the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education. He took very seriously his role and his responsibility in making sure that the laws and the decisions that came from the Supreme Court were enforced in the country.”
The collection has about 30 million Eisenhower-related documents, including a letter from baseball great Jackie Robinson and a telegram sent by the mother of murdered teenager Emmitt Till.
Alice Dunnigan Articles
SEEK Museum
Russellville, Kentucky
Alice Allison Dunnigan accomplished many firsts in her career as a journalist, activist and author. In 1947, Dunnigan became the first female of African American heritage to be admitted to the White House and the Congressional and the Supreme Court press corps. She also was the Washington Bureau Chief for the Associated Negro Press. Now the SEEK Museum in her hometown of Russellville, Kentucky, has created a new exhibit featuring more than 500 digitized versions of the stories Dunnigan wrote about civil rights and racism.
“I think by reading the papers, you clearly see the importance of the lack press and the information that they were giving to people, giving to African Americans across the country,” said Gran Clark, chairman of the museum’s board. “The stories that she told were from the perspective of an African American woman who had faced prejudice for her race and for her gender, and those stories just weren’t told anywhere else. And the Black press was a very vital part of the Civil Rights Movement, and these articles [educated] African American communities throughout the nation about the biases, prejudices and inequalities of our country.”
The Dunnigan papers are collected in the 1940s home of her sister-in-law, where the journalist returned to visit family between stints in Washington. The area surrounding the home is being developed as a park and features a bronze statue of Dunnigan — the first public statue of an African American woman in Kentucky.
Executive Order 9981
Harry S. Truman Presidential Library
Independence, Missouri
Harry Truman once famously said, “There is nothing new in the world except the history that you do not know.” And when Truman learned some things he didn’t know about the historic mistreatment of Black people in the United States, it changed his perspective — and his presidency.
“President Truman was a very unlikely advocate for civil rights based on his background,” said Cassie Pikarsky, who serves as director of strategic initiatives for the Truman Library Institute in Independence, Missouri. “At that time, Missouri was a Southern state. His family going way back were Confederate sympathizers. When he first enrolled in the Missouri National Guard and went to his grandmother’s house to show off his blue uniform, she took one look at him and said, ‘never show up at my house in [a blue] uniform ever again.’ Truman separated what he might think was right or wrong as an individual versus what was right or wrong as president of the United States.”
In 1946, hours after being honorably discharged from the U.S. Army, decorated veteran Sergeant Isaac Woodard was attacked — while still in uniform — beaten and blinded by South Carolina police on his way home after serving in World War II. Horrified by this and other reports of Black soldiers encountering violence, Truman established the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. He addressed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1947, the first president to do so. And on July 26, 1948, Truman desegregated the federal government with Executive Order 9980, and the U.S. military with Executive Order 9981 — the first major civil rights actions. Copies of the executive orders are on display at the library; the originals are housed at the National Archives.
