Jennifer Scott on creating a museum with a mission to play a vital and active role in the ongoing fight for justice and civil rights in the United States

There is too much at stake for us to fail…The fight for our ideas, our language, and our history is critical to the fight for our lives.(1)

What Does a Social Justice Museum Look Like in the 21st Century?

The heartless murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota in 2020 triggered a wave of outrage and protest across the United States against police brutality and systemic racism on a scale that we may have not seen since the 1960s. It sparked a long overdue racial reckoning and wave of activism across the globe that impacted multiple levels of civic society, including museums.(2)

In response, museums fast-tracked their reflections on how they could become more just institutions and better agents of civic society. They strategized how they could better support and sustain stronger democracies and help to create a more equitable society. We are now seeing an unprecedented awakening of conscience in museums where institutions are becoming more diverse and inclusive than they have ever been. Museum staff and boards are reassessing and revising their governance structures, funding sources, collections and labor practices and their foundational values and ethics. Many museums that were formerly insular and elite, are increasing their engagement with local communities and amplifying their focus on social impact.

The American Alliance of Museums, in fact, identifies ‘social impact’ as the key value for museums: “The true value of museums lies in their social impact: their effect on the well-being of the people around them. Museums can play an essential role in sustaining strong, inclusive, and resilient communities by enriching education systems, bolstering economies, strengthening the social fabric of communities, improving people’s well-being, and beyond.”(3) And in 2022, the International Council on Museums (ICOM) adopted a new definition for museums that emphasizes community engagement, diversity and inclusion: “A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”(4)

But is Diversity and Inclusion Enough?

Inclusion, diversity, empathy, cultural competency – while all useful tools that are blossoming in the museum realm – it is important to note that they do not guarantee social justice. Diversity and inclusion give needed access and opportunities to a broader range of people of varied backgrounds. Training in empathetic practices, cultural competencies and practices of belonging may help us to better understand, even accept, differences. But none of these approaches necessarily address structural racism or the dismantling of other systems of oppression -sexism, trans- and homophobia, anti-immigrant-ism, ableism, militarism – that originally caused these exclusions. They may bring more people into the fold, but often, to operate in the same flawed systems. As a result, as Robin D. G. Kelley has argued, we are “…emphasizing a respect for difference over a critique of power,” which comes at a cost.(5)

How do we arrive at a social impact that is effective, meaningful, and equitable – that does not affirm the same exclusive and abusive systems and marginalize the same communities that have been historically oppressed? How do we build a museum that is more democratic, and one that critiques the flaws within our democratic systems? How can museums inspire the social change we want to see happen?

Building a Social Justice Museum

The National Urban League (NUL), based in New York City, has an exciting opportunity to tackle this challenge with the establishment of a new history museum – the Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem (UCRM). When it opens in 2025-26, UCRM will be New York’s first museum dedicated to civil rights – and one of the first in the nation to focus on the history of civil rights in the North.

Founded in 1910, originally as a social services movement, the National Urban League is “an historic civil rights organization dedicated to economic empowerment, equality and social justice” with a mission to “spearhead the development of social programs and authoritative public policy research, and advocate for policies and services that close the equality gap.”(6) NUL and its 90 affiliates in 37 states provide direct services to help elevate the standard of living in historically underserved urban communities, serving more than two million people annually through its five pillars: jobs and economic empowerment, education and youth development, health and quality of life, housing and community development and justice and civic engagement.

The Museum will be a call to action… a vibrant, educational experience that inspires visitors to realize their potential as participants and agents of change in the ongoing movement for civil rights

The National Urban League will return to Harlem where it began over 100 years ago, relocating its New York City headquarters to the National Urban League Empowerment Center – a new 17-story building in Harlem at iconic West 125th Street. It will be a mixed-use development to include office, residential and retail spaces. The Urban Civil Rights Museum will be a part of its relocation and expansion, located on the 4th floor of the new NUL headquarters. In 2022, I was honored and delighted to be appointed by NUL as the inaugural executive director and chief curator of UCRM to help the organization develop and lead the vision for the Museum to fruition.

The Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem will interpret, document and explore the long and ongoing struggle for justice and civil rights in Northern urban environments across America from the 1500s to the 21st century era of Black Lives Matter through a range of historic themes, including:

● the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the early roots of the African American presence in the urban North in New York State and in other Northern cities
● the development of early Free Black settlements in the North created before the Civil War and during the Post-emancipation era in New York State and beyond
● the Great Migration and its significance in creating thriving and unique black communities in the Northern cities
● diasporic narratives specific to the history of the Black freedom struggle that expanded dramatically in the aftermath of the Great Migration of Black Americans moving Northward
● the story and impact of Harlem’s Cultural Renaissance and other thriving Northern communities
● the 1950s and 1960s grass roots movements and the role of changemakers and civil rights organizations in these movements, including the National Urban League

And the Museum will be a call to action. The vision of the Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem is to provide a vibrant, educational experience that inspires visitors to realize their potential as participants and agents of change in the ongoing movement for civil rights. It will be a place where one can see and feel the work of the many people who fought for justice in urban centers in the North, to reflect on past civil rights efforts, to imagine new possibilities of collective work and to inspire future action.

The Right to History. The Right Side of History

So why is a 113-year-old social service organization starting a history museum? The Museum is the vision of Marc Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League. President Morial, now celebrating 20 years of leading the organization, has transformed the National Urban League and its social justice work. Morial sees the history museum as an extension of NUL’s social justice mission. Since he began, “Morial has marshalled the forces that mobilized to defeat the lynching brute “Jim Crow” to battle his treacherous, gerrymandering son “James Crow, Esquire,” and now stands just as defiantly against his tiki-torch-carrying grandson, “Jimmy Crow.””(7) As part of its curatorial narrative, the Museum will explore these three different generations of civil rights history and the ways in which we have battled the various versions of “Jim Crow.” Part of the uniqueness of the new history museum is that it is driven by an organization that has a long track record as a social change agent – one that has been grounded in civil rights policy, research and advocacy. And now, it can add arts, culture and history to its repertoire. It is encouraging that many new museums are popping up around the US that focus on the African Diasporic experience. However, the National Urban League is distinctive, in that, as a historic Black legacy organization, it is primed to tell these particular stories of the Black Experience and this country’s legacy.

How is history a social justice issue? Many historically marginalized communities have been eliminated from history or their roles minimized. The social injustice, in this case, is invisibility and erasure. We all have a right to know our histories and to see ourselves rightfully placed within those histories. If ‘civil rights’ are “an individual’s right to be an active part of a society and economy without discrimination or oppression,”(8) this means that people have a right to actively learn and pursue their histories without discrimination or oppression and deserve equal access to learning about history and being a part of that history. This means that history is a civil right, and that the fight for inclusive history is within our rights as citizens. In addition to violence, poverty, mass incarceration, police abuse, voting rights suppression, and the many other inequities we experience, we now also face attacks on education that could jeopardize our right to history. Attacks on Black Studies, “intersectionality, critical race theory, Black feminism, queer theory, and other frameworks that address structural inequality” are mounting, and books are being banned – many of which represent the stories of people of color and marginalized communities.(9) An open letter fighting ‘anti-woke’ censorship explains what is at stake:

The arc of history bends backwards if we allow our conceptual assets to be stripped away. Every time we relinquish valuable insights from those who have come before, we pass on to future generations the burden of reimagining and rebuilding livable futures without the tools that have been fashioned to do that work. We cannot expect anyone—students or ourselves—to understand problems we are no longer permitted to name or to prepare for a future we cannot imagine. The fight for our ideas, our language, and our history is critical to the fight for our lives.(10)

The Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem is a pre-emptive response to these “attacks on knowledge” we continue to face. When the museum opens, it will not only be a museum of the history of civil rights, it will also be an act of justice – a demonstration of our right to history, to truth-telling, the right to tell our own stories that have been forgotten, devalued, erased and undocumented.

Counter-Histories

We also want the Museum to push further past the inclusion of diverse and neglected stories. In addition to introducing stories that are relatively unknown, the Museum also has an opportunity to present “counter-histories.” These are not just stories that add diversity to the historic record. They also counter non-normative narratives. In other words, these stories do not just fill in the missing gaps, they also oppose received knowledge and popular understandings. They correct some of the distortions of history. In particular, the UCRM will address five historical myths:

● that the Civil Rights story is only (or primarily) a Southern US story.
● that Civil Rights began in the 1960s
● that this struggle is over and the fight for Civil Rights is in the past
● that it’s impossible to be victorious
● that we don’t need to work together

The museum interprets these stories through the present and frames the fight for justice and civil rights as an ongoing one, as living history – one that is collective, participatory and one in which we all have the power to play a role and shape our futures

The museum will give us an opportunity to share experiences of what happened when people moved North to try to secure better lives for themselves from the very beginnings of when they first experienced injustices – as fugitives in the Underground Railroad, as builders of Free Black communities, as migrants in the Great Migration, as creators, artists, thinkers and writers of the Harlem Renaissance, and the victories and struggles they met there. These stories take place well before the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1963 March on Washington. And it does not stop in the past. The museum interprets these stories through the present and frames the fight for justice and civil rights as an ongoing one, as living history – one that is collective, participatory and one in which we all have the power to play a role and shape our futures.

Resistance is Our Heritage

The Museum also aims to dispel the perception that histories of people of African descent and other marginalized communities are overdetermined by violence and deviance. The lens of the museum will engage the history of civil rights as one of resistance. It will introduce violence as a brutal ‘correction’ of those that have resisted injustice. The museum is aligned with Robin D. G. Kelley’s view that “Violence was used not only to break bodies but to discipline people who refused enslavement. And the impulse to resist is neither involuntary nor solitary. It is a choice made in community, made possible by community, and informed by memory, tradition, and witness. If Africans were entirely compliant and docile, there would have been no need for vast expenditures on corrections, security, and violence. Resistance is our heritage.”(11) The story that the museum will share of the history of civil rights is a multi-faceted story of resistance and our ongoing attempts at liberation.

Activating the Power of Place/ Elevating Counter-Spaces

Located on 125th Street’s main thoroughfare of Harlem, the Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem will function as a cultural cornerstone in the community and a first stop for visitors, interested in the development of Harlem as the epicenter for African American cultural and social progress. The Museum will be located where history happened – in Harlem where the National Urban League was founded, where migrants from the Great Migration relocated and escaped from Southern terror, where the Harlem Renaissance thrived, where Civil Rights marches took place. Because most Civil Rights Museums are located in the US South, this will be one of the few Northern sites that will share this history embedded in place. There is tremendous opportunity to activate the neighborhood and site with these stories.

The Museum will be located in an iconic Black neighborhood that was historically segregated and is now experiencing tremendous gentrification. In her book The Power of Place, public historian Dolores Hayden, says that “urban landscapes are storehouses for social memories.” And when neighborhood disruption happens such as gentrification, eviction, demolition and certain forms of development, we are capable of losing significant public memories with a threat of neighborhoods disappearing.(12) The Museum has an opportunity to preserve these memories through the collecting and interpreting of stories and memories from current and former residents. Documenting, preserving and interpreting these stories in the actual place that they happened helps to tangibly mark and preserve that place in contrast to the rapid changes the neighborhood is experiencing. It helps to create what Hayden calls a “counterspace,” a space that resists the destructive, disruptive and totalizing forces of the neighborhood.

Ensuring a Right to the City

Because it will be embedded in the community, the Museum also has the potential to address issues of spatial injustice. Spatial justice, defined by geographer Edward Soja, is “[t]he fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and opportunities to use them.”(13) And because of “locational discrimination,” over time, various forms of spatial injustice occur instead. The inequitable distribution of resources prevents people from exercising their right to the city, from having equal access to what the city offers – from housing to economics to information. For example, as Soja states in clear terms, “Segregation is a spatial injustice.” It deters citizens from participating fully in civic processes. An informed citizen is more likely to fully participate in civic processes and speak out against injustices that negatively impact them and their communities. How can residents better navigate the city to gain equal access to resources and information? The Museum can offer access to social knowledge that helps residents and visitors to better advocate for social justice for themselves and their communities.

Using History as a Powerful Tool to Call for Action

The Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem will connect past to present, emphasize living history and participatory history and address relevant social issues within a geographic, cultural and environmental context. It will help us exercise our right to history by engaging communities with unknown and lesser-known stories of resistance, counter-stories, and it will incorporate critiques of power. The Museum will experiment with new ways of activating neighborhood and place and invite visitors to become changemakers and to exercise their rights to the city. Working under the National Urban League, a trusted civil rights organization that already provides direct services in the areas of public health, jobs, labor, policing and violence, the Museum adds a helpful layer of the historic and ongoing fight for justice and civil rights. Using history as a powerful tool to call for action, the museum promises to be what the American Alliance of Museums described over 20 years ago as a community cornerstone:

“Museums are community cornerstones. They are cultural symbols and contributors to community enterprise, stewards of collections, and providers of educational experiences. They are treasured places where memories are created and shared. But museums can also transform the way people view the world… They foster research and life-long learning and encourage the expression of differing points of view. These strengths accord museums the opportunity to assume an expanded civic role in society…Museums are defining new relationships with communities based upon expanded mutual understanding, recognition of common concerns and interests, and a desire to collaborate for the benefit of the community”.(14)

As a community cornerstone, the Urban Civil Rights Museum of Harlem will be better positioned to become a vital resource and advocate for social justice.

Jennifer Scott
Founding Director and Chief Curator, Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem, NYC, United States

(1) “Open Letter on Fighting “Anti-Woke” Censorship of Intersectionality and Black Feminism,” The African American Policy Forum. https://www.aapf.org/freedomtolearn
(2) Taylor Dafoe & Caroline Goldstein, “The George Floyd Protests Spurred Museums to Promise Change. Here’s What They’ve Actually Done So Far,” ArtNet News, Aug. 14. 2020.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/museums-diversity-equity-commitments-1901564#:~:text=In%20the%20wake%20of%20George,in%20systems%20that%20perpetuate%20it.
(3) American Alliance of Museums https://www.aam-us.org/topic/social-impact/#:~:text=Museums%20can%20play%20an%20essential,well%2Dbeing%2C%20and%20beyond.
(4) See ICOM website: https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/museum-definition/
(5) Robin D. G. Kelley, Black Study, Black Struggle, Boston Review, March 1, 2016. https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/robin-kelley-black-struggle-campus-protest/
(6) See National Urban League website: https://nul.org/mission-and-history
(7) “National Urban League Celebrates 20 Years of Transformational Leadership Under Marc Morial” National Urban League website, Sep 12, 2023. https://nul.org/news/national-urban-league-celebrates-20-years-transformational-leadership-under-marc-morial
(8) Mehran Ebadolahi, “What is Civil Rights Law?.” https://testmaxprep.com/blog/bar-exam/civil-rights-law?v=2
(9) “Open Letter on Fighting “Anti-Woke” Censorship of Intersectionality and Black Feminism,” The African American Policy Forum. https://www.aapf.org/freedomtolearn For more details, see Freedom to Learn Movement https://freedomtolearn.net
(10) Ibid.
(11) Robin D. G. Kelley, Black Study, Black Struggle, Boston Review, March 1, 2016. https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/robin-kelley-black-struggle-campus-protest/
(12) Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place Urban Landscapes as Public History, The MIT Press, 1997.
(13) Edward Soja, “The City and Spatial Justice,” 2009.
(14) “Museums & Community Resolution” passed by the board of directors of the American Alliance of Museums in 2002.

First published in the 2023 print edition of Museum-ID magazine (12 October 2023)