Exhibit depicting Civil Rights Movement opens at Columbus Museum

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WTVM) - With the national Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday coming up, a new exhibit depicting the Civil Rights Movement has opened in the Fountain City.

The Columbus Museum held a grand opening for the exhibit Saturday morning.

Artifacts on the wall tell the story of a fight for justice. The culminating stories of several generations put together in this new exhibit, Journey Toward Justice: The Civil Rights Movement in the Chattahoochee Valley.

“The Journey Toward Justice was a labor of love,” said Rasheeda Ali, Advisory Council member.

Curator of History at the Columbus Museum Rebecca Bush says efforts to get this exhibit came as a result of the protests of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor along with the death of former U.S. Representative John Lewis.

“Really put into stark focus for me that we need to talk to these folks. We need to capture these people’s stories,” she explained.

Bush says those folks were the people in the community brought together in an advisory council.

The journey starts during a time of segregation in Columbus. It’s a time that Advisory Council member Rasheeda Ali says she remembers.

“Coming up in segregated times was pretty rough, although we didn’t feel it until after it became desegregation. Everything was all Black for us - we had or own community theater, which was the Liberty Theatre. We had the area’s downtown.”

It goes on acknowledging aspects of the Civil Rights Movement including Jim Crow laws, the roles of Black institutions all the way to the 21st century - highlighting protests for justice and key activists like Leah and Darius Prather.

“For us, it’s a lot more than just being at home and being outraged by a lot of things,” Leah Prather said. “And we’ve done a lot of other caused protests that are important to us. We’ve done women’s marches together. We’ve done gun violence just here in our community.”

The exhibit will be up for nine months.

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