The Louisiana Civil Rights Museum opens
16th October 2023 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer
Civil rights icons, professionals, government officials, residents and media gathered at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Hall A, in New Orleans to witness the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum (LCRM) grand opening on October 7, 2023.
At least 300 people attending the inaugural event enjoyed the sounds of Clark Knighten & the 4×4 Connection, ate brunch, listened to the Dillard University Concert Choir, and listened to those involved in bringing the LCRM from a vision to bricks and mortar.
“It’s important to have this museum to educate the public about Louisiana’s pivotal role during the Civil Rights Movement and those who stood up and sat down for justice,” Louisiana Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser told the audience.
“I am honored to officially open the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum in New Orleans. This historical museum, which has been in the works for years, promises to be an interactive look into the past and the heroes who were at the forefront of making rights real,” said the lieutenant governor.
Nungesser is credited for bringing the project to fruition. After attending a conference and hearing others talking about their state’s Civil Rights Trail, Nungesser felt Louisiana needed to pay tribute to its civil rights heroes, too. To date, 13 stops on the Civil Rights Trail with iconic statutes tell the story about each location, person, or event.
His office funded the research and worked with newsman Norman Robinson, who conducted oral histories, and Ernest English and Glenda McKinley of GMc & Company, who designed the museum. Nungesser lauded Southern University A&M College and Grambling students for collecting data and connecting his office with eyewitnesses to history.
Brenda Williams, the president of the LCRM Advisory Board, explained the museum’s mission.
“The LCRM will educate the public about the history of the Louisiana Civil Rights Movement. It will heal the wounds of the descendants of people slain in the battle for civil rights and celebrate the accomplishments and gains of those who have worked to make rights real,” she said.
Williams cited family members of those slain in the Colfax Massacre who worked with family members of the perpetrators to replace the racist monument that celebrated murderers with the names of the slain heroes as an example of the type of efforts the LCRM will work toward.
Lt. Gov. Nungesser thanked Williams for her dedicated work and thanked Don Hubbard, a freedom rider, for leading the charge to establish the museum. In attendance were other freedom riders, most notably Jerome Smith and Doratha “Dodie” Smith-Simmons.
Hubbard and Smith drove the station wagon donated by Lena Horne to Mississippi during the height of Freedom Summer in 1964. Civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were in the car when they were chased down, abducted, and murdered.
Smith, beaten during Freedom Summer, returned home and established the Tambourine and Fan Club, a mentoring program for the city’s youth, at Hunter’s Field and founded the Treme Center, a recreational facility for youth.
A picture of Smith at a Woolworth sit-in and Oretha Castle is in the museum. When asked what he thought about the event and museum, Smith, a man of few words, said, “Thank you.”
During the program, Smith, as he is known to do in public, stood up and loudly criticized the event organizers for not making the city’s youth a part of the event. “The only problem I have is there are no children here. There should be children here to see this.”
Several of New Orleans’ other history-makers spoke at the historic event.
New Orleans Mayors LaToya Cantrell, the city’s first woman mayor, Marc H. Morial, and Sidney Barthelemy spoke about the city’s role in the national and local Civil Rights Movement.
Michael Sawaya, president and CEO of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, told attendees the “Louisiana Civil Rights Museum is a testament to the brave souls who participated in the movement. It reminds us that the pursuit of justice is a never-ending journey.”
Norman Robinson, who emceed the event, introduced the Honorable Diana E. Bajoie as a “lioness at heart,” but Don Hubbard calls her “killer,” he said, provoking audience laughter. Bajoie, a civil rights activist in her own right, who was a founding member of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, the first woman elected to the Louisiana Senate, and the first to serve as pro-tempore of the Senate, authored the original bill for creating a civil rights museum.
Bajoie introduced the Civil Rights Museum legislation during the Foster administration. Governor Murphy James Foster Jr. was Louisiana’s 53rd governor. His grandfather, Murphy J. Foster Sr., the 31st Louisiana governor, supported the 1898 Louisiana Constitution, which disfranchised the Black majority.
Murphy Jr.’s conservative platform included attacks on welfare abuse, gun control, affirmative action, and racial quotas during the era of affirmative action.
Undeterred by Foster’s position, every year, Bajoie ensured “something” was put in the state budget for the Civil Rights Museum.
Bajoie credited Hassan Haley (son of Oretha Castle Haley and Richard Haley), Don Hubbard and Loyce Wright for keeping the dream of the museum alive. “I also want to thank Lieutenant Nungesser. We need people to keep the fight going because we’re just beginning. We want to make sure we tell our own story. It’s taken a long time. It’s like making gumbo. If you go too fast, it won’t come out right.”
Bajoie expressed a need to focus on raising more money to keep the museum going.”
Don Hubbard shared wisdom given to him by his mother. Growing up in segregation, Don would ask his mother why he couldn’t do certain things. Those who grew up in segregation knew what he meant. You couldn’t go to public parks and had to sit in the back of the bus and in movie theater balconies. You couldn’t even go to Canal Street on Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans.
“My mother was the most militant person in my life. When I asked her why we would do that, she said, ‘Because baby, they’re waiting for you to change it.”
His mother’s words reverberated when he learned that the lieutenant governor said no to having the Civil Rights Museum in the Convention Center. Hubbard met with Nungesser and asked where the Civil Rights Trail would end. The initial location was in the French Quarter.
After he impressed upon Nungesser that the LCRM needed to be in the largest building in Louisiana named after a Black man, the largest building in New Orleans, the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the museum’s location was changed.
“Coming in here was not a flowery bed of ease,” Hubbard added. “There was a lot of pushing, shoving, and twerking,” Hubbard continued. He thanked the lieutenant governor, “the first Republican ally I supported in my life.”
The Right Place, At the Right Time
Marc H. Morial, the 59th mayor of New Orleans and president and CEO of the National Urban League, gave the keynote speech in the facility named for his father, Ernest N. “Dutch” Morial.
In 1968, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, a New Orleans attorney, was the first African American elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives since Reconstruc-tion. Before his term ended, he won a seat as a New Orleans Juvenile Court judge. In 1977, Dutch Morial became the first African-American mayor of New Orleans.
Marc H. Morial was elected to the Louisiana Senate in 1992, and in 1994, he was elected mayor of New Orleans.
“The sermon has been given by Rev. Don Hubbard,” Morial said, laughing. He thanked Nungesser and recalled that Dutch was elected the day Sidney Barthelemy was elected to the city council.
“Senator Bajoie also authored the legislation to rename this building after my father,” he added, noting efforts after Hurricane Katrina to remove his father’s name.
“We will not back up the minute anyone wants to diminish our contribution to this city, state and nation. The essence of this city from its earliest days was shaped by Africans. The free and enslaved Africans built the buildings, the ironwork, created the culinary legacy, and did so much for the first 150 years. Homer Plessy was a New Orleanian. The resistance movement which began after the Civil War, led to Black people and White people who thought segregation was abhorrent….”
Morial said the history of Louisiana’s civil rights legacy was previously told through oral history, but now the museum is tasked with preserving that history. “I want every school child, student and teacher to visit the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum.”
Understanding the unforgiving political climate in which Nungesser resides, that his fellow Republicans might take issue with his support for the museum, Morial told the lieutenant governor, “Send those loud-talking, wolf ticketing people to me.”
“The Louisiana Civil Rights Museum is a celebration of the contributions, the struggle of students, teachers, and the clergy. The LCRM is about the masses, the student protesters and mothers who wanted better for their children. As Don said, ‘Let’s go get this money,” Morial concluded.
The event ended in Fireside Chats with Former State Senator Cheryl Gray Evans and Retired Judge Edwin A. Lombard, moderated by LeBron “LBJ” Joseph of WGNO-TV and WYLD -FM.
This article originally published in the October 16, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
