National Civil Rights Museum Reconnects With Younger Generations (transcript)

By Christine Buttorff

Making history a subject that jumps out of textbooks and into students’ lives is difficult when the events took place hundreds of years ago.  But the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee has found that it’s just as difficult to connect students to history when the figures involved are still alive.  So museum officials turned to students at Vanderbilt University develop a strategy that will connect their peers not only with the past but also with current human rights struggles.  WPLN’s Christine Buttorff reports:

Interviews:
Beverly Robertson, NCRM president
Ashaki Black, student
Michael Gottfried, student
Also with tape from Diane Nash, January appearance at Fisk.

The National Civil Rights Museum is struggling to make itself relevant to a generation without firsthand knowledge of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.  President Beverly Robertson says she sees it everyday.

ROBERTSON: “While we have 40-thousand school kids come through, the balance of the 160-thousand people tend to be people who range in age from 35 or 40 all the way up to 80 and not so much the younger generation, not so much the 30 down.”

The museum’s problem, explains Robertson, is that young Americans are becoming separated from their history.

ROBERTSON:  “So we knew that if we did not identify ways to sort of broach the gap or bridge the gap, that pretty soon, if we’re not doing that, then we’re going to lose or have die out all those folks who are responsible, so we wouldn’t have an audience.”

That’s where Vanderbilt University comes in. Its Owen Graduate School of Management runs a special, 4-week summer program called the “˜Accelerator’ to give students interested in business some hands on experience. 

45 Students met with officials and toured the Memphis museum which is housed in the Lorraine Hotel, the site where Doctor Martin Luther King Junior was shot in 1968.  Over the space of about a week, they created youth outreach campaigns ranging from essay contests to benefits for Darfur at the museum.

(NTSD of proposal presentation) “When I was little, I wanted to be like Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.”

Five teams competed for marketing internships with the museum and formally presented their proposals to their professors and museum officials in Nashville this month–using PowerPoint presentations and some even with video montages of still photographs. Ahsaki Black led the winning team. 

BLACK:  “I think one of the things to remember is not trying to force the issue of just knowing about the civil rights movement, but knowing how taking events from what happened in the civil rights movement is still relevant with what’s going on today.  And I think that’s more so what we were trying to do with our project.”

Black’s group pitched a road trip from all areas of the country to the museum.  Co-presenter Adrian Reif says people could upload videos of their trips as they went onto YouTube, the internet video site. 

REIF: [fade up] “”¦Now who in our generation doesn’t love a good road trip.  [laughter] it’s so easy to jump in the car, go for a little adventure wherever you want across the country, so our first campaign is the “˜Show Us Your Road Trip Campaign””Destination Memphis.’” [fade under]

Other teams also used the road trip concept to reference the 1961 “˜Freedom Ride.’  The goal of the original freedom riders ““ a group of black and white civil rights activists – was to enforce a Supreme Court decision that de-segregated interstate bus travel. Buses set out from Washington DC, bound for New Orleans. They got as far as Alabama before one of the buses was fire-bombed. 

A group from Nashville that included a young Diane Nash, tried to restart the ride in Birmingham.  Nash spoke at a gathering of some of the original freedom riders at Fisk University in January. 

NASH:”¦I wish you could have seen your grandparents in the 60s.  They were all the things that the media now tells you that black people are not”¦.We were full of dignity and pride and strength and wisdom and commitment and hardworking.  And that’s who you really are.  I hope, I hope you will sincerely study the movement and it is a precious legacy.”

It’s this legacy that National Civil Rights Museum president Beverly Robertson is worried about losing, but not only for African Americans.  Student Michael Gottfried, who’s white, now understands her fear.

GOTTFRIED: “Growing up you, I sort of thought of the civil rights movement as you know, someone didn’t want to get off of a bus, and a series of speeches and change.  But when we really got to investigate the number of events and injustices that went on throughout the, really, centuries, it was pretty impactful to open my eyes and educated me on why something like that should never happen again.”

And for Beverly Robertson that’s a reward beyond the little time and money she spent on the students.

ROBERTSON:  “Now that’s a great investment.  Low cost, big return. [laughs] You can’t beat it.”

For Nashville Public Radio, I’m Christine Buttorff.

**The music at the end of the story is Vanderbilt University’s “˜Voices of Praise’ and was recorded at the Fisk University Chapel during the event where Diane Nash spoke in January 2007.**