♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Dr. Russ Wigginton, the president of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, next on "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

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We are focused on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion both inside our company and in the communities where we live and work.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives and in our communities.

Wells Fargo, the bank of doing.

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Learn more at api.org/apienergyexcellence.

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♪♪ ♪♪ >> We are honored to have Russ Wigginton, the president of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel.

>> Thank you, sir.

Honored to be with you.

>> Listen, you have a storied background.

You've been over at the museum for three to four years, and you were on the board for longer than that.

But tell us something about your family background.

You were born in Kentucky.

>> I was born in Louisville, Kentucky.

My parents were involved in the civil rights movement.

My mom was arrested desegregating lunch counters in Louisville, Kentucky, as a young woman.

And my father, who was a proud Howard University man, was suite mates with Stokely Carmichael.

And the stories that I heard about the work of the movement in the '60s from both of my parents inspired me in so many ways.

>> And then your family moved from Kentucky to Tennessee?

>> Yes, my family moved to -- from Louisville, Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee.

My dad was in the wave of early African-Americans who had a chance to work in management, at the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.

That was dovetailed by my great-grandfather, who served as 50 years as a redcap for the L&N Railroad.

So that opportunity and that move to Nashville when I was 12 years old, little did I know would be transformative and set a course for me to provide some opportunities that I could've never imagined.

>> Right.

Nashville was also one of the cradles of the civil rights movement, with SNCC -- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

You mentioned your father's relationship with Stokely Carmichael, who at one time was the head of SNCC.

Well, I'm going to just fast-forward.

Everyone should know the name Lorraine Motel.

April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on that balcony.

Tell us about the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel.

>> Absolutely.

And that tragic day of April 4, 1968 reigns in our ears every day.

We watch people walk up that balcony or walk up that courtyard, and they seek out that balcony, and they stand up straighter.

The air is different at the National Civil Rights Museum.

People come to pay homage to Dr. King and to the movement at large.

When they get in the museum, what they find is a comprehensive history of American history.

400 years.

And it culminates with them seeing room 306 and that balcony.

What's important for people to know is the museum came about after about 20 years of disrepair of the Lorraine Motel.

And it took three local business leaders and the community at large to come together and say, "We have to do something with this place that makes it memorable.

It is too important in our nation's history."

And so the establishment of the museum was underway.

And in 1991, in September of 1991, the museum doors opened.

I can assure you, nobody was projecting 33 years later that we would have approximately 300,000 visitors, 15% of those visitors coming from outside of the United States.

They didn't imagine that our visitors would be racially, ethnically, politically as diverse as they are.

They also didn't imagine that the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel would be affiliated with the Smithsonian Institute and considered an International Site of Conscience.

But the reason that we are is that the space and the place are essential for all of us to know and understand, appreciate and connect with.

>> So, the National Civil Rights Museum is really a global destination point, not only for tourists, but those who are seeking a more in-depth understanding of what happened in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

>> That is exactly right.

One of our special skills is that we have the ability to be a place where all people can feel comfortable.

We talk about uncomfortable topics.

We talk about slavery.

We talk about troubled race relations.

We talk about the lack of civility and the desire to get to civility in civil and human rights issues, and the importance of dignity and humanity.

These are hard topics for everybody.

And so we cast a big net, if you will, and allow people to enter as they are.

And we provide opportunities for people who may not know very much at all and people who may have a degree of expertise, because we don't just shine the light on the signature iconic figures.

We talk about everyday people doing extraordinary things, and our hope is to provide hope and to inspire people to be the best that they can be.

Dr. King set that tone for us and we are obliged to follow it.

>> Everyday people doing extraordinary things.

I see the image of those sanitation workers with the signs "I am a man" as they marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and others.

Tell us from your perspective as the president of the museum, are young people getting a sense of not only what led up before Dr. King was assassinated, but why was he in Memphis in the first place?

>> That is the goal.

And I appreciate you referencing specifically young people because we feel obligated as part of our mission and vision to speak to people, particularly young people, in this day.

It's been well over 50 years since Dr. King died.

And we can't assume that everyone learns about not just him, but that era.

It's also important that we don't let the movement be thought to have died at the fatal assassination of Dr. King in 1968.

So we've embarked on a transformative renovation of the boardinghouse.

That is the building across the street where the alleged shot was fired and the surrounding community park area, a significant renovation to focus on what happened after Dr. King died from 1968 to the present.

So the impact of the movement that he led and so many others participated in transformed and led to other types of movements and continues to do so throughout the 21st century.

And so our obligation is for people to be grounded in that context and that historical richness that too many of us have forgotten, so that people today can see themselves in activities that are happening today.

The theme of this effort comes specifically from Dr. King's last book, "Where Do We Go from Here."

>> "Chaos or Community?"

>> That book was written in 1967, but I daresay 2024, it still applies.

And so it gives us this wonderful platform to have up-to-date conversation, if you will, that still connects back to the heart of the movement.

We're 60 years removed from the Civil Rights Act.

Next year will be 60 years from the Voting Rights Act.

Those are civil and human rights and voting are essential tenets of the work we do today.

So, young people, we're here for you.

And, older people, we're still here for you.

>> When 300,000 people circulate through the museum, tell us what you leave with by having the opportunity to be in the very spot, the very balcony, the very motel room where Dr. King was assassinated.

>> I talk to people every day and ask them about their experience.

I ask them on the front end, many of them, what are they anticipating, and I ask them on the way out what did they experience.

And there's some common themes that have emerged.

Number one, most people who come understand that this place has a degree of sacredness to it.

What they tend to underestimate is the breadth and depth of what they experience.

Certainly Dr. King is critical to the story, but we provide so much more.

We tell a comprehensive story, and essentially it allows Dr. King's place in the story to be understood at a much higher and deeper level.

And I have a very simple goal about what I want and what people experience at the museum.

It is for them to have a collision of their head and their heart.

I want them to learn about somebody or some moment, or some infamous or famous situation and to learn more about it or to learn about it for the first time.

I want them to learn about the nuances, and that the story of many aspects of the movement did not necessarily end with a -- in a nice, neat bow as if it were a Hollywood script.

I also want them to see something and witness something that hits them right here.

I want them to feel it, because I believe when you have a head and heart collision, you're bound to remember it.

You're bound to reference back to it.

You're bound to be more curious about it.

And that's what our visitors tell us every day happens for them at the National Civil Rights Museum.

>> The intersection between one's consciousness and one's soul, spirit and heart.

In my last visit to the museum, I was just very impressed with the way you're using modern technology to bring alive what happened in the 1960s and beyond.

>> Absolutely.

And this renovation that we've embarked upon will continue that trend.

It is important for museums to stay relevant and to understand that what we are trying to do is create awareness and generate a deeper appetite.

So the museum experience is set up that -- such that an individual who may not have a lot of time can still get their -- whet their appetite and want to know more, and also for the person who is coming back for day two to complete the experience.

And so we want you to be privy to the degree of information that your heart desires.

One of the ways that we do that is to make sure that our facts and our data and our primary sources and our archives are interwoven, thoughtfully put together, and we've embarked on a digitization project so that things will be made available online at a much broader level.

One of the things that is true about the National Civil Rights Museum and museums at large is when you visit these museums, you only get a snapshot of -- typically of a collection of a museum.

So for example, at the National Civil Rights Museum, we have over 11,000 items in our collection.

And you just see a snapshot of those.

Imagine what's going to happen when we digitize all of these items and we fit them together to expand the story, the technological story, and the primary source story that is so much and so integral to the National Civil Rights Museum and to the civil rights movement at large.

>> You mentioned the multiracial, multiethnic character of the 300,000 people who visit annually.

Tell us, what responses have you gotten from some of the visitors?

>> When people emerging from the museum saying things like, "I didn't know so much of this history.

Why didn't anybody ever tell us about this part?

I didn't know so many people were involved.

I didn't know the movement touched so many parts of the country."

When you hear that consistently, it's validation that we have to -- we're obligated to make sure that people are brought into the fold.

I am convinced that if people knew more about the movement, they would do better, and they would want to know more, and it would make them better citizens.

It would make them more caring people.

And it would make for a better sense of civility in our country.

I have no doubt about that.

>> Now, you've used the term civility several times.

There's an absence of civility.

There's an absence of bipartisanship.

What can the narrative that you have at the museum help to promote the return of civility, the return of bipartisanship?

That's why history is so important.

We should learn from it, not necessary to repeat it.

>> It's very clearly stated in our mission.

First and foremost, we are a place that honors the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his commitment to civility and nonviolence.

He gave his life for sanitation workers in Memphis.

He detoured from the Poor People's Campaign to come to Memphis for the dignity of sanitation workers.

That's first and foremost.

That is followed by our intentionality to educate, to not make assumptions about what people know connected to our history, but to educate and tell a broader, more comprehensive history of our country and to serve as a catalyst for positive social change.

So we are a place of convening for tough conversations for people who are not necessarily practicing civility, but come to the museum because here's what I will tell you.

After you tour the National Civil Rights Museum, it sure is hard to sit across from somebody and not see their humanity.

And once you see somebody's humanity, you can disagree with them on all manner of issues, but it's a lot harder to treat them in subhuman, disrespectful ways.

And so part of it is we help people operate from a common platform, and we use facts and data.

We don't make stuff up.

It's here in black and white.

It's here on film.

It's here in documents.

Read it, make meaning of it, understand it, and then sit at the table and look at each other through a particular lens.

It opens up the door, quite frankly, for us to learn each other's personal stories, because once you know somebody personally, it's hard to not treat them as a human.

We need to get back to that.

We need to get to that, and we need to practice that throughout this country.

>> The oneness of humanity.

>> The oneness of humanity.

Can we borrow that for one of our taglines at the museum?

>> Of course, that's one of my favorite phrases.

And I would also say there's only one race, and that's the human race.

>> Yes, sir.

>> We're all part of one human family, but we're distorted because of racism, because of anti-Semitism, all these isms, Islamophobia.

There's a difference between sympathy and empathy.

Can you just elaborate that the goal of the National Civil Rights Museum is to enshrine that people will not only be empathetic, but take some action in the present to make a better world?

>> One of our favorite, taglines, if you will, is history moves us forward.

And we use that because we want people to situate in the now.

Learn about the history so that they're equipped to go forward.

And we do believe that that is critical to create an empathetic lens.

The old saying "you know better, you do better" holds true.

And you have to -- There aren't a lot of places that are situated to take on all of the complexities of our ragged history and to use it as a catalyst to move us forward, but we are one of those places.

There's a picture of several men standing on the balcony in front of room 306, pointing that if you don't put a word to it but if you show that picture worldwide, people know where you are.

That is where we are.

And we use that as a jump-off point, if you will, for people to recall that is the place where a man, a Nobel Prize-winning 39-year-old father who tried to change the world in very simple ways through civility, decency and nonviolence.

When you have that platform and you're talking to people and you're having people experience that platform, I can assure you the conversation changes.

We are the place.

We are one of the places where that happens every day.

>> Do you see people going back and try to learn something from what happened at the Lorraine Motel, to help them figure out how to navigate forward today given that we are much more a racial -- multiracial society, multiethnic society, multilingual society?

How do we deal with all this diversity?

>> As a historian, one of the things that I've always thought is that our American culture and what you just described, I consider to be a dimension of American culture.

How our culture evolves is more of a marathon than a sprint.

And so, because I look at where we are and where we could go and should go through the lenses of a marathon, it helps me be optimistic about the future, because when you look through those lenses, it does help you understand that 60 years ago this year, the Civil Rights Act was passed.

That legally changed the landscape.

Now, we know we've had ebb and flow throughout.

>> Which was done bipartisan.

>> Which is done bipartisan.

Absolutely.

>> Republicans and Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

>> That's exactly right.

And then when you fast-forward another year, the voting rights.

>> That's right.

>> So when you -- >> Also bipartisan.

>> Also bipartisan.

So when you think about those moments and the importance of what they did, they changed the framework.

What they didn't do is guarantee that we were done.

They changed the framework.

So the discussions we're having now and any threat to backtrack on that, while they are disappointing and challenging, they -- the overarching conversation is still different.

It's about the recommitment.

And every generation has to do this.

Every generation.

Coretta Scott King said it so clearly.

Every generation has to fight for and establish what its version of freedom and progress looks like.

We're interested in the past, but history moves us forward.

We're forecasting, and I believe the history of -- or the future of museums like ours depends on our ability to look forward and to be intentional about that look forward so our country can reach its full potential.

>> Dr. Russ Wigginton, thank you for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you, sir.

Honored to be here.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guests, visit our website at thechavischronicles.com.

Also, follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, diverse representation and perspectives, equity, and inclusion is critical to meeting the needs of our colleagues, customers, and communities.

We are focused on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion both inside our company and in the communities where we live and work.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives and in our communities.

Wells Fargo, the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute.

Through API's Energy Excellence program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental and sustainability progress throughout the natural gas and oil industry around the world.

Learn more at api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed health, and happiness live as long as you do.

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