• Home
  • Archive
  • Media Kit
  • Contact Us
  • May 8, 2025

The Madison Times

The Paper That's More Than Black and White

  • News
    • Local News
    • National News
    • International News
    • Sports News
    • Education News
  • Columns
    • Columnists
    • Editorials
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Life Lessons with Alex Gee
  • Events
  • Health
  • Finance
  • Lifestyle
  • Classifieds
  • Community
    • Middle Spread
  • Milwaukee

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print

Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Tells Authentic Stories from the Movement

August 4, 2018

By Freddie Allen
(Editor-in-Chief, NNPA Newswire)

The atrium of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. (Mississippi Civil Rights Museum)

In the early morning hours of January 10, 1966, civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer Sr. was jolted from his sleep, as members of the Ku Klux Klan surrounded his house just north of Hattiesburg, Miss. Dahmer, a Black land-owner, had been actively working to register Blacks to vote and, in some cases, he even paid their “poll” taxes. It was enough to earn a Black man a death sentence in the South.

The Klansmen bullets ripped through the darkness, splintering wood and shattering glass as they fired on Dahmer’s house; one of them hurled a Molotov cocktail through the window; the Klan wanted to burn Dahmer and his family alive.

As smoke and flames engulfed his home, Dahmer grabbed his shotgun and blasted his way out, creating a diversion as the rest of his family fled into the woods. Later that day, Dahmer died from smoke inhalation at an area hospital.

A few days later, Dahmer’s voter registration card arrived in the mail.

“These are the kinds of stories we talk about in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum,” said Pamela Junior, the museum’s director. “We tell people all the time: Museums are living and breathing places.”
Junior lamented that, oftentimes, the history of the Civil Rights Movement is told through the narrow lens of a few key figures, like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. She said that it was important that people know that Mississippi was ground zero for the Movement; the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum helps to tell the stories of the people that were there.

“What we want to do is make sure that the stories are told authentically,” Junior said. “We have our own native son, Medgar Wiley Evers. We have Fannie Lou Hamer, June Johnson, Owen Brooks…local people who made up the Movement.”

Junior said that it was also important to show that civil rights leaders were ordinary people, yet they still managed to have a significant impact on the course of American history.

Exhibit commemorating the Jackson Public Library sit-ins. (Mississippi Civil Rights Museum)

Junior continued: “So, to see something so powerful that these regular, poor people did to make things happen in the state of Mississippi is awesome.”

The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum opened on December 9, 2017. The Clarion Ledger reported that the Dahmer family donated a truck that had been shot during the 1966 attack to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

The museum promotes a greater understanding of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi and shares the stories of the movement that changed the world.

A press release that described the museum said that visitors can witness the freedom struggle in eight interactive galleries that show the systematic oppression of Black Mississippians and their fight for equality that transformed the state and nation.

The press release continued: “Seven of the galleries encircle a central space called ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ There, a dramatic sculpture glows brighter and the music of the Movement swells as visitors gather.”

Each museum gallery highlights a specific sub-topic or period. Gallery 1 defines civil and human rights; Gallery 2 focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction; Gallery 3 highlights civil rights activists and shares the stories of a Mississippi movement that changed the world; Gallery 4 peels back the layers of a segregated society; Gallery 5 showcases the sacrifices and the successes of the 1960s; Gallery 6 takes a deep dive into the Freedom Summer and local movements in Mississippi (1963-1964); and Gallery 7 tells the story of Black Empowerment from 1965 to the early 1970s.

Junior said that, through the civil rights museum, the ills of Mississippi are finally on the wall.

“We’re taking the bandage off of the sore,” Junior said. “We don’t allow it to fester anymore. We let it breathe, so that healing can continue.”

The last gallery, Junior said, was designed to spark conversations about how all races can move forward together.

“Martin is gone. Medgar is gone. All these people are gone that were at the center of the movement, at the forefront. We believed in them and trusted in them. These people are gone,” Junior said. “So, what we want to do is teach people that they are the movement.”

Junior continued: “We are the movement; it’s up to us to do the work.”

Gallery 8 is titled “Where do we go from here?” and features mirrors with quotes from Mississippians who made incredible sacrifices to improve the lives of others.

One of the last quotes that visitors see as they walk out of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum is by Oseola McCarty, a Black seamstress and domestic worker who lived in Hattiesburg, Miss. McCarty, who “quit school in the sixth grade to go to work, never married, never had children and never learned to drive,” according to The New York Times, eventually donated nearly her entire life savings—$150,000—to the University of Southern Mississippi to fund scholarships for Black students.

“[McCarty] said that, ‘if you want to be proud of yourself, you have got to do things you can be proud of,’” Junior said. “So, I want people to live by that mantra.”

For more information about the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, please visit http://www.mcrm.mdah.ms.gov/.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print

Popular Interests In This Article: Civil Rights, Freddie Allen, Ku Klux Klan, Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Oseola McCarty, Pamela Junior, Varnon Dahmer Sr.

Read More - Related Articles

  • May Day and The Intersection of Civil Rights and Workers’ Rights
  • The Road Map to Civil Rights : The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
  • Congressman James Clyburn meets with Milwaukee Civil Rights Activists
  • Literacy: The Next Civil Rights Frontier
  • Panel Talks Dr. Ronald Walters’ Legacy, Black Power and the Black Press


Connect With Us

Become Our Fan On Facebook
Find Us On Facebook


Follow Us On Twitter
Follow Us On Twitter

Editorials

Karma Chavez
Amanda Zhang
Julianne Malveaux
Benjamin Chavis
George Curry

Journalists

Jacklin Bolduan
Brianna Rae
Aarushi Agni
Rob Franklin
Claire Miller

Topics

Brown Girl Green $
Young Gifted & Black
Universally Speaking
Ask Progress
Civil Rights

Topics

Police Shooting
Police Brutality
Black Lives Matter
NAACP
Racism

Politicians

Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton
Gwen Moore
Paul Soglin
Scott Walker

Contact Us

Phone:
414-449-4860

Copyright © 2025 Courier Communications. All Rights Reserved.
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.