Jan. 15—Maybe it was because I had just read “Those We Thought We Knew,” an unblinkingly honest treatise about the state of U.S. race relations disguised as a Southern gothic whodunnit by acclaimed novelist David Joy, who resides in Jackson County.
Maybe it was because I found myself clutching my wife’s arm a bit tighter and keeping my head on a swivel as we passed by numerous panhandlers and homeless, most of them Black, as we meandered the streets of Memphis on a recent road trip.
Whatever the reason, as we rounded the corner from a popular Memphis barbeque joint toward the National Civil Rights Museum, I found myself utterly gobsmacked, stopping dead in my tracks at the sight of one of the most infamous balconies in American history. There stood the Lorraine Motel, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated April 4, 1968, on the second-floor balcony.
When we made plans to visit the National Civil Rights Museum as part of our trip, I had no idea the facility was literally built around the motel where King was gunned down as he discussed next steps in his efforts in support of striking Memphis sanitation workers, the majority of whom were African-American.
It made for an incredibly sobering introduction to one of the most meaningful museums I have visited in my life. Did I enjoy the experience, you might be asking. “Enjoyment” would not be the word I would use to describe my feelings.
Emotions ranged from deep sadness at images of the horrible things people can do to other people just because their skin is a different color to overwhelming shame at the atrocities committed by members of my own race, although I had nothing to do with those events.
I tried to inconspicuously wipe tears from my eyes before they could begin rolling down my cheeks as I viewed an exhibit about Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black kid from Chicago tortured and lynched for the “crime” of whistling at a White woman in 1955 Mississippi. Despite photos of the child’s battered body as it lay in an open coffin at the request of a grieving mother desperately wanting the world to see the consequences of race-fueled hatred, Till’s killers, who would later confess to their crimes, were acquitted by an all-White jury.
I grew angry as I read about the numerous historical markers erected in the 2000s at the site where young Till’s body had been dumped in the Tallahatchie River, only to be defaced, spray-painted with the initials KKK or riddled with bullets. “Man, it took so much bravery to shoot up an unarmed sign,” I muttered, moving on to another exhibit.
From sections depicting the horrors of the slave trade through the build-up to the American Civil War and up to the lunch-counter protests, student sit-ins and Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus, the National Civil Rights Museum shines a necessarily harsh light on ugly aspects of our nation’s history that many would prefer to simply forget.
Several times throughout my visit, I had to stifle an intense urge to apologize for the sins of my forefathers to every person of color I saw — especially those who worked in the museum. But I could tell that many of them saw the emotion in my face, and I suspect those employees see that reaction every day.
The National Civil Rights Museum reminded me of a previous visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Both visits were not exactly “enjoyable.” Instead, both experiences were extremely educational, incredibly moving and enormously vital for a true, unvarnished understanding of our history — warts and all.
After returning from Memphis, I re-read a section of David Joy’s “Those We Thought We Knew,” which examines racial tensions that roil a modern rural community in the mountains of Southern Appalachia.
A Black character in the book says, “The tree with the deepest roots in this country is a tree of White supremacy.” She suggests that folks might not water the tree or prune its branches, but they don’t take any action to remove it because they benefit from sitting beneath its shade. Asked what she would do in the name of progress, the character says, “I want to hand them an axe.”
Reading “Those We Thought We Knew” and visiting the National Civil Rights Museum handed me an axe. I plan to swing it.
Bill Studenc, who began his career in journalism and communications at The Mountaineer in 1983, retired in January 2021 as chief communications officer at Western Carolina University. He now writes about life in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
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