Temporary exhibition, Sept. 10, 2014–Sept. 12, 2015. 3,600 sq. ft. William Jacobs, chief of interpretive programs; Carroll Johnson-Welsh, Kimberli Curry, and Betsy Nahum-Miller, exhibition directors; Adrienne Cannon, manuscript curator; Alan Gevinson, media curator; Robert Brammer and Pamela Craig, law library curators; Maricia Battle, prints and photographs curator; Risa Goluboff, lead adviser; Debra Newman Ham, consulting curator; Marcus Allen, Leslyn Ham, and Sarah Johnson, research assistants; Patrick Shepler, registrar of interpretive programs; Karen Werth, production officer.
Journal of American History, Volume 102, Issue 1, June 2015, Pages 185–188, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav285
01 June 2015The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom, Journal of American History, Volume 102, Issue 1, June 2015, Pages 185–188, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav285
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The exhibition reviews in this issue are a vivid reminder of the potential for public history projects to deal forthrightly with often-painful issues in historical memory, and of the power of such projects to address contemporary concerns.
At two of the sites examined here, our reviewers found some remarkable alignment with the renewed racial tensions and violence that surfaced in the United States in 2014. Kevin Strait writes that the familiar “public narrative” of civil rights history on display in the Library of Congress fiftieth-anniversary exhibition “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom” was inadvertently sharpened during the anniversary year. He writes: “The national discourse in 2014 on race and activism was shaped by events in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York City, by discussions of white privilege and the ‘black lives matter’ movement, and by recent Supreme Court decisions on voting rights.” Strait writes that the exhibit ultimately “breaks the narrative free from the confines of commemoration, lending depth to the struggle, where it is needed most.”