“The Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson are two new interconnected museums that take visitors through the sweep of Mississippi history and the state’s role as ground zero in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. The museums combine interactive visitor experiences with exhibits showcasing artifacts including a 500-year-old dugout canoe discovered submerged in mud on the bank of a lake and the doors of the Bryant Grocery that 14-year-old Emmett Till walked through before the fateful encounter with the shopkeeper that led to his murder in the summer of 1955.
Mississippi’s former history museum was closed after Hurricane Katrina ripped apart its roof in 2005. The two new museums will expand the way the state’s history is presented, from prehistoric times to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. Both museums will use Mississippi’s rich tradition of storytelling to showcase the compelling lives of ordinary people who made extraordinary contributions to the state and the nation. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum will be the only state-operated civil rights museum in the nation.” — Two Mississippi Museums
Museum of Mississippi History
Museum of Mississippi History, The First Peoples 13,000 BC–AD 1518, Entrance into first gallery
Museum of Mississippi History, Cultural Crossroads 1519–1798, “Natchez Trace and Entrance to Mount Locust Inn”
Museum of Mississippi History, Joining the United States 1799–1832, 20-star United States flag exhibit
Museum of Mississippi History, Scenic Overlook, “One Mississippi, Many Stories”
Museum of Mississippi History, Promise and Peril 1903–1927, “Rising Tide”
Museum of Mississippi History, Forging Ahead 1946–Present, Rising from the Ruins: exhibit on Hurricane Katrina
Museum of Mississippi History, Forging Ahead 1946–Present, “Lucille’s Place Juke Joint”
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Four: A Closed Society, “The Lynching of Emmett Till”
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Four: A Closed Society, “Separate is NOT Always Equal” view 1
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Four: A Closed Society, “Separate is NOT Always Equal” view 2
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Four: A Closed Society, “Separate is NOT Always Equal” view 3
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Five: A Tremor In The Iceberg, “Medgar Evers Assassinated”
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Six: I Question America, Gallery Entryway
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Six: I Question America, Rear view of re-created church
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Six: I Question America, “Is This America”
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Seven: Black Empowerment, Wide angle view of gallery 7
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Seven: Black Empowerment, Vernon Dahmer Exhibit 1
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Seven: Black Empowerment, Vernon Dahmer Exhibit 2
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Three: This Little Light of Mine, “This Little Light of Mine Sculpture”
“These museums are telling the stories of Mississippi history in all of their complexity,” said Katie Blount, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, which operates the two new museums. “We are shying away from nothing. Understanding where we are today is shaped in every way by where we have come from in our past.”
Images courtesy Two Mississippi Museums.
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