Enlarge Barbara Andrews of the National Civil Rights Museum.

Posted: June 17th, 2011 Greg Lacour

With a long history of resistance to racial and cultural change, the South is once again trying to adapt.  

Over the past two decades, the region has seen the fastest rate of Latino population growth, which has transformed cities like Charlotte and touched off a rebirth of intolerance reminiscent of the days of the Civil Rights movement, when African-Americans were thought of as subhuman, criminal, vectors for disease.

This week, officials from seven history museums in the Southeast gathered at Levine Museum of the New South to launch a new project they hope will lead to constructive, civil, fact-based dialogue about the heated topic of immigration.

It’s called the Civil Rights Sites of Conscience Network, and it will operate under the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC), a New York City-based organization that works with museums around the world on education and community engagement programs.

Levine Museum, chosen to host the four-day conference to launch the initiative, is one of the seven member museums. The others:

• The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham, Ala.


• The International Civil Rights Center and Museum, Greensboro.


• The Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans.


• The National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis.


• The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta.


• The Duke Human Rights Center’s Pauli Murray Project, Durham.

Their collective goal is to develop programs to explicitly tie the struggles of the Civil Rights movement to the current battles over illegal immigration and immigration reform. The ICSC hopes the programs help museum visitors “gain lessons from our history that can help us overcome the rifts in our country and our communities today,” said coalition Executive Director Elizabeth Silkes.

The network’s launch conference ran Tuesday through Friday, and members used that time to draw up a framework for programs and the inclusive language they should use in framing the conflicts – to avoid, for instance, using the loaded term “illegals” to refer to undocumented immigrants.

“It’s part of the national dialogue, but not always in healthy ways,” said Barbara Andrews, director of education and interpretation for the National Civil Rights Museum. “We’re not talking about immigration, we’re being led to conclusions about immigration – and those conclusions do not always include facts.”

Immigration is a difficult subject to discuss because it has become so emotionally charged – and that’s why informed dialogue is so crucial, said Levine Museum President and CEO Emily Zimmern. It’s also important, she said, to remember that this nation of immigrants has a long history of hostility to them, whether they’ve been Irish Catholic, Chinese, Eastern European or Latino.

“There’s a sense of history that all our museums address in one way or another that can help reframe this issue,” Zimmern said. “That we’ve been here before, and that it’s tough, but we can make it through.”

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