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On the Edge of the Weekend
May 17, 2018
People Civil rights exhibit on the move For The Edge The Missouri History Museum’s popular exhibit, #1 in Civil Rights: The African American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, saw more than 260,000 visitors before closing on April 15, 2018. Due to the popularity and community impact of this exhibit, the Missouri History Museum has partnered with area institutions in order to share the powerful stories found in the exhibit with the St. Louis community for years to come. The bulk of the #1 in Civil Rights exhibit- labels of text, photographs and graphics – will travel to local institutions including the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, the Griot Museum of Black History & Culture, the University of Missouri –St. Louis and the Northwest Academy of Law and Social Justice. The Urban League will be the first to showcase the panels in an exhibit in their Vaughn Cultural Center on Grandel Square in the Grand Center Arts district. “As we move forward to the next 100 years, we must first preserve the history from the last 100 years as it exposes many fundamental lessons learned,” said Michael McMillan, president and CEO of the Urban League. The Urban League, which is celebrating its centennial in 2018, hopes to have the show open to the public in July and it will run through February of 2019. The panels will then go to the Griot Museum and the
Missouri History Museum
Panels as seen in the #1 in Civil Rights exhibit which had been featured at the Missouri History Museum. The exhbit now travel to other institutions where it will be displayed. University of Missouri –St. Louis, which have partnered to showcase panels from the exhibit at a number of different locations at the museum and on the USML campus. In addition to showcasing the panels, both organizations have a full slate of proposed programs to continue to tell the St. Louis civil rights story in new ways. “Our collaborative use of the exhibit will do more than simply extend the life of this powerful and popular exhibit,” said Lois Conley, the founder and executive director of the Griot. “We will give it new life by reconfiguring
its elements according to e x p a n d e d i n t e r p re t i v e frameworks and supplemental interpretive material that will be contributed by students, historians, and members of St. Louis’s African American community.” The Missouri History Museum’s partnership with the Northwest Academy of Law and Social Justice, a St. Louis public high school, will give local students the opportunity to create their own civil rights exhibit. Beginning next fall, Museum staff will teach students public history methods and approaches that will help them create
an exhibit using both elements from #1 in Civil Rights and their own artwork and panels. “We are at a time in the history of this country where the children are rising up and creating the kind of future they want to live in,” said Krista Germann, the school’s social studies department chair. “#1 in Civil Rights can be the inspiration and the blueprint for the action our children take to create the St. Louis they want to live in.” The Missouri History Museum is committed to telling the stories of everyone who has called the St. Louis region
home through exhibits, programming and partnerships such as these that allow the institution to share the history of this region beyond Museum walls. “So much of this history had been forgotten. We w a n t e d t o m a k e s u re these stories were never f o rg o t t e n a g a i n , ” s a i d Jody Sowell, director of exhibitions and research for the Missouri History Museum. “We are proud of the partnerships we have made with the Griot, UMSL, Northwest, and the Urban League, we are excited to see what they do with the panels, and we are committed to continuing
to tell these stories at the Missouri History Museum in new and exciting ways.” In addition to these partnerships, the Missouri History Museum is developing a traveling banner show based off the #1 in Civil Rights exhibit that will be available to libraries, community centers, and other public institutions. The show will be available for travel in October. Groups interested in hosting the show should e-mail exhibits@mohistory. org. About #1 in Civil Rights The fourth most-popular exhibit in the Missouri History Museum’s more t h a n 1 5 0 - y e a r h i s t o r y, #1 in Civil Rights: The African American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis was on display at the Museum from March 11, 2017 – April 15, 2018. The exhibit examined the local civil rights movement and the city’s leading role in advancing the cause of racial justice. #1 in Civil Rights uncovered a history that’s compelling and complex, but that all too often has been overlooked in the telling and retelling o f t h e l a rg e r n a t i o n a l narrative. That narrative includes four precedentsetting Supreme Court civil rights cases that originated in St. Louis— possibly the most to ever re a c h t h e H i g h C o u r t from one source. It also included events and battles that had a significant and lasting impact, as well as live performances from Missouri History Museum ACTivists.