June 09--Whatever you might have learned about slavery in school, the revamped National Civil Rights Museum (450 Mulberry St., 901-521-9699, http://www.civilrightsmuseum.org) turns it into a gut punch.
As a result of the museum's three-year, $27.5 million renovation completed last year, a visitor's first stop is the history of slavery, highlighted by a map built into the floor that traces how slaves were traded across the globe.
The numbers are stark:
"Nearly five million Africans were enslaved in the Caribbean. Most labored on sugar plantations ..."
"Nearly 400,000 slaves were brought to North America. Most were 'seasoned' -- beaten into submission and acclimated to disease in the Caribbean ..."
"Over 5 million Africans were enslaved in Brazil ..."
The museum's history of civil rights previously started with the advent of Jim Crow laws in the late 1800s that promoted racial segregation. But when reshaping the museum, it was important to start the history of civil rights history at the beginning, said Faith Morris, the museum's director of marketing, governmental and community affairs.
"There was a reason that this country was in the position it was in. Jim Crow came from something," Morris said. "We needed to back up the story a little bit."
The harrowing slavery exhibit is part of what Morris calls "a total redo" of the museum that first opened in 1991.
Many iconic features were left in place, like the replicas of the Freedom Riders bus that was firebombed in Alabama in 1961 and the public bus where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955.
Others have remained, like the replica lunch counter where sit-ins were staged in 1960 at a Woolworth in Greensboro, N.C., but have been enhanced: Visitors can now sit at the lunch counter while a video plays overhead detailing the history of the sit-in. Added technology includes interactive screens dedicated to historical markers such as the Woolworth sit-in and the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that undid "separate but equal" as the law of the land.
Of course the museum's most popular attraction hasn't been touched: the room where Martin Luther King stayed the night before he was assassinated on the balcony of what then was the Lorraine Motel in 1968. It remains there, trapped behind glass, frozen in time.
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