A Mississippi civil rights museum appears to be going to Tougaloo College, but state Sen. David Jordan still hopes to bring a satellite museum to Greenwood.
“This is where the action was,” Jordan said. “A lot of speeches were made at Tougaloo, but the action was in the Delta.”
On Wednesday, a Tennessee-based consultant recommended a nine-acre tract on Tougaloo’s campus as the site for the museum.
However, a commission appointed by Gov. Haley Barbour to study the issue must support the recommendation also.
Jordan said he will continue to push for the museum itself coming to Greenwood until the site selection is finalized.
A site in Hattiesburg is the second choice, and three locations in downtown Jackson were recommended as the next-best options.
The museum would feature artifacts and highlight areas of the state that are important to the civil rights movement. Officials said it will open in two to three years.
A private fundraising drive is expected to begin after the approval process. Legislators also must provide funding for the partnership.
A legislative study committee recommended in December 2006 that the state borrow $50 million to build and equip the museum. That committee also recommended a site somewhere near Jackson.
Jordan feels the advantage Tougaloo had was that many civil rights leaders went there because it was a private college. State schools would not allow civil rights leaders to come on their campuses.
However, many significant events took place in the Delta, and Jordan says that is of interest to tourists.
“It would be wrong for the Delta, and Greenwood specifically, not to have a satellite museum,” he said.
Jordan often speaks to groups on civil rights tours.
He said visitors are interested in historical places in Greenwood like Broad Street Park where Stokely Carmichael is said to have first used the term “black power” and the place on Howard Street where dogs were sicked on blacks attempting to register to vote.
The next such group is scheduled to come in April or May and is from Indiana, he said.
