I found this photo over at The New Republic. It is just an amazing photo to represent the Civil Rights struggle in the United States.
If you ever go to Memphis, I highly encourage you to stop at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel. While I have not seen every public memorial and museum, it serves as one of the best in the country for the way in which it recreates and tells the story of race relations throughout the United States from colonial days until the assassination of MLK Jr. With other modern memorials, such as the Oklahoma City Memorial, I feel empty when I see it and do not know how I ought to feel. At the Lorraine Motel, the pathos is unmistakable.
Out in front of the hotel, by the cars of Dr. King's entourage, there is a plaque that reads:
"They Said to One Another:
Behold. Here Commeth the Dreamer....
Let us Slay Him...
And We Shall See What Will Become of his Dream."
The quote is from Genesis about the story of Joseph before being sold into slavery. It is an interesting way to open the story told in the Museum as the foreboding feeling of the quote does not diminish the hope involved in the Civil Rights Movement.
Bonus: If you are interested, here is a timeline about the last hours of Martin Luther King Jr.
1 comment:
Maybe your point remains regarding other modern memorials, but I don't know that the Oklahoma City Memorial and the Lorraine Hotel are really parallels. That is, I'm not even sure it's a possibility. Though there are other reasons, the primary one that comes to mind is the fact that the Lorraine Hotel still exists. It is still standing. As someone who woke up in the morning on the morning of April 19, 1995, to hear and see the reports of the Murrah Building bombing, and to find the building gone, or at best a mere shadow of what it originally was, I don't think there's a memorial that can "tell" others what to feel simply in architectural form. When I went to the site of the bombing, it looked like a war zone. This isn't exactly the kind of scene people preserve in the hopes that an effective pathos will be presented to those who visit a future memorial site.
I haven't visited the Lorraine Hotel, but it seems to have a more general appeal to Americans, as they can identify with a national history of civil rights activism. The preservation of the hotel, from the parking lot to the rooms, only adds to the effect of making Dr. King's assassination a part of the present rather than an event or artifact of the past. There was little to nothing left to preserve in Oklahoma City; we simply had to begin anew, while still finding a way to remember.
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