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 Dent came to New Orleans to lead the troupe and the Deacons were war veterans with combat experience from the had an almost immediate impact on the administrative and artistic Korean War and World War II. The Jonesboro chapter later organized direction of the Free Southern Theater. Under Dent’s leadership and a Deacons chapter in Bogalusa, Louisiana, led by Charles Sims, A. Z. with the help of Val Ferdinand (Kalamu ya Salaam), the Free Southern Young and Robert Hicks. The Jonesboro chapter initiated a regional Theater implemented a community writing and acting workshop, organizing campaign and eventually formed 21 chapters in Louisiana, BLKARTSOUTH. In these workshops, members began to write Mississippi and Alabama. The militant Deacons’ confrontation with the and produce scripts which were incorporated into the company’s Klan in Bogalusa was instrumental in forcing the federal government to repertoire. The Free Southern Theater eventually settled in the intervene on behalf of the black community and enforce the 1964 Civil Desire neighborhood of New Orleans. Rights Act and neutralize the Klan.

Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Potential Sites Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Potential Sites 11 Potential Sites

The location of the museum should capture and contribute to the synergy Visitor Experience Map of tourist traffic currently generated within our identified primary visitor Visitor Experience Zones experience zone in Louisiana, located in the heart of New Orleans. This I. Primary zone offers convenient access to multiple attractions, public transportation II. Secondary Visitor Experience Map Visitor Experience Zones and important historic Civil Rights sites. The final selection of the site will III. Tertiary Quarternary IV. I. Primary take into consideration sites that fall within this primary visitor experience II. Secondary Potential CRM Sites III. Tertiary zone, sites that maximize capital outlay money and sites that have been IV. Quarternary (Offered by Others) offered via third party partnership interest. The core basis of our site Potential CRM Sites recommendations, however, will fall on these primary drivers for this Significant Civil Rights Sites (Offered by Others) museum’s success: Significant Civil Rights Sites Existing Museums Existing Museums - Access to public transportation - Adjacency to historic civil rights sites - Adjacency to other museum facilities - Access to food service facilities - Proximity to special events - Generally positive safety perception

Visitor Experience Map Visitor Experience Zones

I. Primary II. Secondary III. Tertiary IV. Quarternary

Potential CLCRMRM S Sitesites (Offered by Others)

Significant Civil Rights Sites

Existing Museums

Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Potential Sites 12 Louisiana Civil Rights Heritage Trail

One of the guiding principles in the Louisiana Center for Civil Rights & Alexandria Social Justice Five Year Strategic Plan 2011-2016 states that “The museum Anna bontemps Home - 1900 Baton Rouge will focus on enhancing knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of Old State Capital, bus boycott - 1953 the unique civil rights experience of Louisiana. With centuries of diverse Site of Kress Drus Store sit-in - 1960 Mooringsport Port Hudson Battlefield Site - 1863 Bogalusa peoples, history, culture, and language, these experiences will collectively Shreveport Downtown, Deacons of Defense - 1965 produce a remarkably distinctive State heritage.” In 2007, Turry Flucker and Delta Bogalusa to Baton Rouge March (Florida Parishes) - the team from the Louisiana State Museum completed preliminary research 1967 A.Z. Young Home - c. 1950s-1960s on an African American Heritage Trail Project that identified an initial twenty Delta (Madison Parish) sites in ten cities around the state where significant events took place in the Homesite of Madame C.J. Walker, 1870s Lafayette /Opelusas history of Louisiana’s struggle for civil rights. Good Hope Baptist Church Opelousas Massacre Alexandria Lake Charles The extension of the museum to other sites around the state through the Commemoration of Doretha Combre, activist 1960s Heritage Trail system offers opportunities to connect visitors to the culturally La Place St. Charles Parish Slave Revolt of 1812 rich diversity that the state has to offer. This network of historic sites Bogalusa Mooringsport Leadbelly’s home site c. 1910s reminds locals and tourists of the breadth and reach of Louisiana’s struggle Opelousas Baton Rouge New Orleans for civil rights and social justice. It offers local communities an opportunity Homer Plessy’s home - 1880s-90s for increased economic development, and universities, municipalities and Lake Charles Lafayette Railroad Station where Plessy event occurred - 1890 LaPlace William T. Frantz Elementary, Ruby Bridges civic organizations a chance to partner in the enrichment and awareness New Orleans Integration - 1960 Homesites of Louis Armstring, Jelly Roll Morton, King of their local culture. In 2003, Executive Order 13287: ‘Preserve America,’ Oliver, Kid Ory - 1900s-1910s !( stated that “studies have shown that heritage tourists stay longer and Shreveport Louis Christopher Pendleton home-site spend more than other tourists,” and that investment in heritage tourism, commemoration (also in Monroe, his “helps to retain the community’s unique sense of place…promoting birthplace) - 1950s-60s Site of NAACP founding, 1909 (first LA chapter) community pride and enhancing quality of life.” This facility will seek Fannin Street- historic African American business district to expand the heritage story of our state for local sense of pride and education, but most importantly, for the extended knowledge of our State via the tourist focus embedded in the museum experience.

Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects

ESKEW+DUMEZ+RIPPLE / MANNING ARCHITECTS LOUISIANA AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE TRAIL SYSTEM Louisiana African American Historical Trail System | Louisiana | March 09, 2012 Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Oral History Project 13

Louisiana Civil Rights Oral History Project

The Louisiana Civil Rights Oral History Project also started in 2004. Seventy oral histories were conducted. Of those oral histories, sixty were conducted in Natchitoches Parish; ten were conducted in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. This is an ongoing project, funded in part by the Louisiana State Museum and the Cane River National Heritage Area. The major goal for this ongoing project is for these oral histories to help inform the permanent exhibitions. They will also be available for researchers either at the site or in our Historical Center at the Old U.S. Mint, located on Esplanade Ave.

Partial List of Interviewees

- Lolis Edward Elie (Civil Rights attorney)

- Ernest L. Jones (Black Panther Civil Rights Attorney)

- Sybil Morial (Wife of Dutch Morial- first African American mayor in New Orleans)

- Dr. Norman Francis (President of Xavier University of Louisiana)

- Johnnie Jones (Baton Rouge, Louisiana civil rights attorney)

- Ben Johnson (Civil Rights activist in Natchitches, Louisiana)

(Clockwise starting from upper left) Ben Johnson (Civil Rights Activist in Natchitoches, Louisiana) Sybil Morial (wife of Dutch Morial- first African American mayor in New Orleans) Lolis Edward Elie (Civil Rights attorney) Member of the Black Panther Party being arrested Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Size and Cost Assumptions Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Size and Cost Assumptions 15 Size and Cost Assumptions

Cost Assumptions Description Cost Per Square Foot Total The goal is to ensure that the scale and scope of the museum is Permanent Exhibits $500.00 $10,000,000.00 appropriate for the mission of a statewide heritage exhibit. Research Changing Exhibits $300.00 $1,500,000.00 was conducted on comparable institutions throughout the country. Size and cost were measured against mission statements and operations. Multiplier (1.55) Prototypes were assembled in a range of sizes and tested against the Total Square Footage $250.00 $9,687,500.00 goals and ambitions of the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum. The results Total Construction Cost $21,187,500.00 suggest a museum of approximately 40,000 square feet at a cost just over $35 million. A museum of this size and scope offers Louisiana the capacity to embody a statewide story with the flexibility to accommodate Site Evaluation $211,875.00 the evolution of its ‘living’ story through changing exhibitions. Programming Fee $211,875.00 Professional Fees $3,178,125.00 The Cost Assumptions are provided for budgetary purposes Professional Exhibit Fee $4,661,250.00 and should be considered order-of-magnitude numbers at this time. Total Professional Services Fee $8,263,125.00

Site Development $1,059,375.00 Property Acquisition $1,000,000.00 FFE $200.00 $4,000,000.00

Subtotal $35,510,000.00

FP&C Cost $355,100.00 Total Capital Outlay Request $35,865,100.00

Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana State Museum Status Report Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Status and Background 17 Project Status & Background

The Louisiana Civil Rights Musuem is the brainchild of Attorney Sundiata multi-disciplinary firm, served as the primary facilitators of the process. Haley and Louisiana State Senator Diana E. Bajoie (D. New Orleans). Concordia developed the document, incorporated significant input from Haley is the son of Civil Rights activists Richard and Oretha Castle the Planning Taskforce and garnered approval by the Advisory Board in Haley and the nephew of activist Doris Jean Castle Scott. Planning the the fall of 2010. museum began on June 5, 1999, when Louisiana lawmakers gave final approval to a bill that will establish the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum in In 2011, Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Advisory Board sponsored a New Orleans, operated by the Department of Culture, Recreation and national traveling exhibition called RACE: Are We So Different?, a project Tourism. The House passed, 93-0, Senate Bill 336 by Senator Bajoie. of the American Anthropological Association. Attendance at the opening Representative Renee Gill Pratt, (D. New Orleans) handled Bajoie’s bill reception at the Old U.S. Mint over was over 200 people-including on the House floor. In 2004, Senator Bajoie formulated the Louisiana many elected officials and community partners. During the three Civil Rights Musuem Advisory Board. month showing, the number of visitors to the exhibition was 2,000. The Louisiana Civil Rights Museum also engaged in two different statewide In 2008, the Louisiana Civil Rights Musuem Advisory Board was programs to spark dialogue on race and racism in America. Story appointed and Senator Cheryl Gray Evans (D. New Orleans) was Circles was in partnership with Efforts of Grace, Inc./Ashe’ Cultural Arts appointed founding chairperson. During this time museum specialist Center, and took place in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The second Dr. Deborah L. Mack was engaged as lead consultant, followed by program, Race: A Millennial Generation’s Perspective, took place in the hiring of Founding Project Director Turry M. Flucker. New Orleans, Lafayette and Grambling. Participating colleges and universities included Dillard Universities, Delgado Community College, In 2009, People, Place and Design Research, a Massachusetts- Xavier University of Louisiana, Loyola University, Tulane University, based firm conducted a front end audience report that included input University of New Orleans, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Southern from statewide focus groups. Louisiana Community College, Mc Neese University, Grambling State University, University of Louisiana at Monroe, Louisiana Tech University In 2010 a Planning Taskforce was created from the Advisory Board and Louisiana State University at Shreveport. membership, State Museum staff members and several statewide contributors to complete the strategic planning process culminating On December 13, 2011, Gallagher and Associates, Baxstarr Consulting in this document. The process involved preliminary research, strategic and Eskwe+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects kicked off a feasibility/ planning workshops, key stakeholder interviews and site visits. viability study that will help, among other things, recommend the best Consultants from Concordia LLC, a New Orleans-based, site for the Louisiana Civil Rights Musuem.

Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Advisory Board Members 18

Advisory Board Members

Senator Cheryl Gray Evans, Founding Chairperson Brenda Brent Williams, Interim Chairperson

Mrs. Madlyn B. Bagneris Ms. Lynette Colin Ms. Priscilla Edwards Dr. Romanus Ejiaga Attorney Ernest L. Jones Representative Walt Leger, III Deputy Mayor Judy Reese Morse Mayor Thomas Nelson Senator Karen Carter Peterson Mr. Nolan Rollins Mrs. Loyce Pierce Wright

Senator Diana E. Bajoie, Louisiana Civil Rights Advisory Board Founder

Mr. Turry M. Flucker, Founding Project Director

Gallagher & Associates | Baxstarr Consulting | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple/Manning Architects