Atlanta's museum proposal puts pressure on Greensboro
You can find the text of today's editorial at the end of this post.
The planned civil rights museum in Atlanta adds another fundraising competitor for Greensboro's International Civil Rights Center and Museum.
There are many others. The big ones currently soliciting funds are:
The National Slavery Museum in Fredericksburg, Va.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington.
In addition, there are museums with related themes all over the country.
Those include the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Although they are already well established, they continue to solicit donations to cover operating expenses -- as the Greensboro museum undoubtedly will have to do after it opens.
In other words, many hands are out for the same dollars. Competition is fierce.
The Greensboro museum will have a unique and compelling story to tell about this city's role in the civil rights movement. The museum will be a valuable asset for Greensboro. If it's not completed, the historic Woolworth building, site of the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins, will become an embarrassing symbol of failure.
That's where we stand, and that's why this newspaper and so many community leaders strongly support the $5 million bond proposal, which must be matched by outside contributions. If taxpayers get behind this important project, potential donors will notice and respond. The International Civil Rights Center and Museum will have a better chance of standing out from the crowd.
(I think it would help that cause if it were renamed the Sit-in and Civil Rights Movement Museum, but maybe that's a topic for another day.)
Atlanta's museum proposal puts pressure on Greensboro
A new competitor in Atlanta doesn't have to hurt efforts to raise money for the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro. But Greensboro voters can if they defeat the bond proposal on the Nov. 7 ballot.
Coca-Cola's donation of land worth $10 million in downtown Atlanta pushes forward that city's plan to build a civil rights museum. The project will have to raise millions more from private contributors -- and some of the same corporations and wealthy individuals also could be asked to give to Greensboro's work-in-progress.
The Atlanta museum is just the latest entry on an expanding list. Memphis and Birmingham have well-established civil rights museums, and cities from Savannah to San Francisco have museums dedicated to African American history. Three other major projects are planned or under way, and all are soliciting private donations: the National Slavery Museum in Fredericksburg, Va., and the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, both in Washington.
The Greensboro museum deserves a special place among these important facilities because of its powerful history, occupying the site of the Woolworth's lunch counter where the national sit-in movement was launched in 1960.
Its success, however, depends largely on public buy-in, which can be demonstrated by voter support of $5 million in bond funding. The money must be matched by other gifts. The combined $10 million will be enough to complete and open the museum.
Voter approval will impress potential donors by showing that local taxpayers are giving, too. Defeat could be doubly damaging, costing the museum $5 million and creating a reason for benefactors to back competing projects. Atlanta has raised the stakes, but the issue will be decided in Greensboro.
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