Louisiana CiviL Rights MUSEuM Legislative Package | March 21, 2012 Gallagher & Associates Baxstarr Consulting Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum will be the premier cultural institution committed to gathering, organizing, preserving, and celebrating the history of civil rights in the state of Louisiana. Through exhibitions, city tours, education, research, collections, and publications, LCRM advocates for helping everyone understand the importance of civil rights in shaping Louisiana’s future. Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Mission/vision 03 Mission/vision statement The Louisiana Civil Rights Museum’s long-term vision is a world in which everyone lives their fullest potential with freedom, equity and peace. In ongoing contribution towards this vision, the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum will be a living entity that informs honors, educates and inspires the world about civil rights through the Louisiana experience. To achieve our vision, the mission is to use the Louisiana civil rights experience to heal, educate, celebrate and engage for social justice. Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Project overview 04 Project overview The Louisina Civil Rights Museum will function as an interpretive center that fosters a deeper understanding of the development, impact and continuing relevance of the Civil Rights Movement in Louisiana. The program being considered: - Permanent collection - Traveling exhibition space - Meeting/lecture/performance space - Retail component - Restaurant component This project provides an unprecedented opportunity for us to tell more of the history of Louisiana through the lens of civil rights history and our rich culture—and to bring this story to life in new ways. Target Audiences - Culturally Diverse Populations - Educators and Students - Tourists: Domestic and International - Families with Young Children - Civil Rights History Buffs Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana Civil Rights Museum organizational overview 05 Our storyline of the continued struggle for civil rights Louisiana is different than begins before the Constitution and continues up to today. It covers a diversity of cultures and home-grown leaders any other venue with a civil who have led the way to freedom and equality for both the state and our nation. This is a story of all struggles — rights museum! race, religion, gender and the story of healing. 800,000 annual visitors for meetings/events Essence Festival brings over 250,000 visitors Visitor spending increased to $5.2 billion in 2010 We’ve got visitors! 47,000 jobs added in 2011 Leisure and convention visitors are steadily increasing Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Project overview 06 Project Benefits Benefits to Creating the Museum - The LCRM will illuminate the historical, political, social and economic legacies of the movement and seek to engage the Louisiana community today - This is to be a museum that is inclusive of all stories. Not just a New Orleans museum, it will emphasize the relevance of this history at a local, state, national and international level - The personal stories and struggles told here should create a source of connection which can bring healing - The educational goals will strive to upgrade educational services that will enhance funding and student performance - The LCRM will connect to local universities for content development and for ongoing interaction - Past, present and future stories from Louisiana’s rich cultural history and diverse ethnic communities will be presented - Continued dialogue on current events related to civil rights, civil liberties and human rights Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana Civil Rights Museum organizational overview 07 Educational goals Goals LCRM’s educational goals include providing: 1) Immersive experiences as teaching opportunities 2) Accessible programs and services 3) An online component for distance learning We achieve these goals by: - Appealing to different experiences and styles of learning - Enabling learning through group interaction - Creating inclusive environments and practices - Offering opportunities for multigenerational engagement - Letting communities add their stories Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana Civil Rights Museum history 08 Louisiana Civil Rights history The United States Supreme Court Decision in Plessy v. Ferguson Founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: New Orleans Meeting on February 14, 1957 in New Orleans Hoping to strike down segregation laws, the Citizens’ Committee of New Orleans (Comité des Citoyens) recruited Plessy to violate On January 10, 1957, in the afterglow of the Montgomery Bus Boycott Louisiana’s 1890 separate-car law. Plessy was arrested, tried and victory and consultations with Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, and others, convicted in New Orleans of a violation of one of Louisiana’s racial Dr. King invited some 60 black ministers and leaders to Ebenezer segregation laws; he appealed through Louisiana state courts to Church in Atlanta. Prior to this, however, Bayard Rustin (in New York the U.S. Supreme Court and lost. The resulting “separate-but-equal” City), having conceived the idea of initiating such effort, first sought decision against him had wide consequences for civil rights in the Rev. C. K. Steele to make the call and take the lead role. C. K. Steele United States. The decision legalized state-mandated segregation declined, but told him he would be glad to work right beside him if anywhere in the United States so long as the facilities provided Rustin sought Dr. King in Montgomery, for the role. Their goal was for both blacks and whites were putatively “equal.” The Citizens’ to form an organization to coordinate and support nonviolent direct Committee proclaimed that “We as freemen still believe we were action as a method of desegregating bus systems across the South. In right and our cause is sacred…In defending the cause of liberty, addition to Rustin and Baker, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, we met with defeat but not with ignominy.” Their position was Rev. Joseph Lowery of Mobile, Rev. Ralph Abernathy of Montgomery, vindicated when the Supreme Court upheld similar 14th Amendment Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and Rev. T .J. Jemison of Baton arguments in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education. Rouge all played key roles in this meeting. On February 14, a follow- up meeting was held in New Orleans. Out of these two meetings came a new organization with Dr. King as its president. Initially called Baton Rouge Bus Boycott the “Negro Leaders Conference on Nonviolent Integration,” then In 1953, while minister of a large church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, “Southern Negro Leaders Conference,” the group eventually chose Rev. Jemison helped lead the first civil rights boycott of bus service. “Southern Christian Leadership Conference” (SCLC) as its name, and The organization of free rides, coordinated by churches, was a model expanded its focus beyond busses to ending all forms of segregation. used later by the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama, which started A small office was established on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta with Ella in 1955. Baker as SCLC’s first — and for a long time, only — staff member. Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana Civil Rights Museum history 09 Louisiana Civil Rights history Deacons for Defense and Justice in Jonesboro, Louisiana Free Southern Theatre and Bogalusa, Louisiana Founded in 1963 by John O’Neal, Doris Derby and Gilbert Moses The Deacons for Defense and Justice is an armed, self-defense African at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, the Free Southern Theater was American civil rights organization in the U.S. Southern states during the designed as a cultural and educational extension of the civil rights 1960s. Historically, the organization practiced self-defense methods in movement in the South. Closely aligned with the Black Arts Movement the face of racist oppression that was carried out by Jim Crow Laws, – and more specifically the Black Theatre Movement – several local and state agencies and the Ku Klux Klan. The Deacons are not members of the Free Southern Theater were figures of national often written about or cited when speaking of the Civil Rights Movement prominence. The Free Southern Theater moved to New Orleans in because the agenda of self-defense, using violence (if necessary), late 1965, hoping to attract financial support from New Orleans’ did not fit the strict non-violence agenda that leaders like Dr. Martin burgeoning African American middle class. However, this move Luther King Jr. preached about the Civil Rights Movement. A group of caused some discord among members who felt that the move to African American men in Jonesboro, Louisiana, led by Earnest “Chilly New Orleans abandoned their initial cause of developing culture Willy” Thomas and Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick, founded the group within poor rural communities for the rural poor. After Gilbert Moses, in November 1964 to protect civil rights workers, their communities Richard Schechner and John O’Neal left the Free Southern Theater and their families against the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. Most of in 1966, Tom