STARKVILLE — There remains a very narrow window of opportunity for Mississippi to construct a state civil rights museum. What a shame it would be if lawmakers allowed that window to close — one that may not soon open again.
On this issue — which is technically dead at this point but not yet “dead, dead, dead” in legislative parlance — Republican Gov. Haley Barbour and the House Democratic leadership are in virtual lockstep. Barbour backs construction of a state-funded civil rights museum and a separate state museum of history.
Barbour has repeated that support in recent days to newspaper editorial boards around the state. The legislative leadership initially agreed on the issue of $30 million in bonds to finance construction of the two museums in Jackson. But Barbour’s Republican Senate allies balked at using solely public funds to build the museums without a contingent requirement that private matching funds of essentially 50 cents for each state dollar be raised prior to construction.
The private match issue is one roadblock for GOP conservatives, while House Democrats are still arguing over the question of whether the museum should be built in downtown Jackson or near historic Tougaloo College in north Jackson.
Barbour argues that no such public-private funding contingency has been required for the construction or renovations of the existing Mississippi Museum of Natural History or the Old Capitol Museum. But GOP senators say the current economic climate makes the private match component necessary.
Calls for a significant state civil rights museum has been made for years but to little avail in the Mississippi Legislature. But Barbour’s advocacy of state funding for the two new museums gave the project new hope in the 2011 legislative session.
But even Barbour’s support for building a civil rights museum has not come without controversy. Criticism from Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson labeled Barbour’s support for the civil rights museum a “symbolic gesture” that did not match what Thompson identified as “public policies that sought to transform the symbols into something more meaningful.”
Would that Mississippians step back from this controversy and focus on the political realities. It will be difficult if not impossible to get the political stars in alignment to build a civil rights museum in this state any time soon.
Like the Civil War and that conflict’s aftermath, the American civil rights struggle literally played out in our state’s backyard. Mississippi needs a civil rights museum not to fleece the tourists – although they will certainly come and the project has an undeniable economic development component – but to focus the eyes of our children and their children on a realistic history of the civil rights movement as told by Mississippians to Mississippians.
Getting hung up over Barbour’s perceived motives or in internecine feuds between civil rights heroes over the location of the museum within the city of Jackson is shortsighted in the extreme. Barbour will be an ex-governor before much dirt is turned by construction crews if the project were approved tomorrow.
What would remain, however, would be a museum that reflects the willingness of Mississippians to confront our past as we continue to build our common future. Pause for a moment to consider the real and undeniable progress Mississippi has made over the last half-century in race relations.
Is that not a story worth telling and an accomplishment worth celebrating? Or will Mississippians choose instead to let neighboring Southern states reap the rewards of historical tourism and continue to cede the responsibilities for teaching Mississippi’s civil rights history to people outside our state’s borders?
• Sid Salter is journalist-in-residence at Mississippi State University. Contact him at ssalter@library.msstate.edu.
