By Karishma Mehrotra
ATLANTA--Civic leaders here long have attempted to draw visitors
with the claim that Atlanta is the home of the civil-rights
movement.
Yet a major historical site, encompassing the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr.'s house and crypt, has been plagued for years by
organizational troubles, squabbles among King family members and
wobbly attendance--even as civil-rights museums in smaller Southern
cities have thrived.
Now Atlanta officials hope a $103 million museum set to open
Monday, the Center for Civil and Human Rights, will reassert the
city's place in civil-rights history.
"It's very much viewed as filling a gap," said Shirley Franklin,
a former Atlanta mayor who heads the center's board. Atlanta "is
legendary for leadership during a tumultuous time."
But the futuristic, 43,000-square-foot museum will debut while
competition for civil-rights tourism has been growing, raising
questions about whether the Atlanta center can draw enough
visitors. It will need 350,000 attendees a year to be
self-sustaining, said the center's chief executive, Doug
Shipman.
In addition to civil-rights museums in Birmingham, Ala.,
Memphis, Tenn., and Greensboro, N.C., the Smithsonian Institution
plans to open the National Museum of African American History and
Culture in Washington in 2016, and the state of Mississippi plans
to open the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson in 2017.
The new Atlanta center's three galleries will include a rotating
exhibit of Dr. King's personal papers, a floor focusing on the
South's era of legal segregation and another on global human-rights
issues. "We're taking the civil rights legacy and bringing it to a
whole new generation, " Mr. Shipman said.
The center, which will charge $15 admission for adults, is
located near Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park close to a cluster
of other attractions, including the Georgia Aquarium and the World
of Coca-Cola.
"People say to go to Birmingham or Memphis," said Atlanta
resident Eileen Suggs, 40. "It's nice to have something here
locally."
The center spent about $68.5 million to build and launch the
museum, and paid $11.5 million to the King family for the right to
exhibit Dr. King's papers. Atlanta businesses and civic leaders
gave an additional $22.5 million to the family to allow the papers'
display.
The city of Atlanta, through its community development arm
Invest Atlanta, provided about $40 million through a tax allocation
district bond and other financing. Corporations, including
Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co., Delta Air Lines Inc., United Parcel
Service Inc. and Home Depot Inc., also gave large donations.
Clayborne Carson, director of the King Institute at Stanford
University, said Atlanta is the logical place for such a museum
because of the city's importance to Dr. King. "It's probably the
most significant museum that I know of that tries to look at human
rights and social justice from a global perspective," said Mr.
Carson. "And I think King would have appreciated that."
But Pulitzer Prize-winning civil-rights historian David Garrow
cautioned against overemphasizing Atlanta's importance.
"A truly 'national' museum would devote more attention to the
black freedom struggle in the crucible states of Alabama and
Mississippi than to Atlanta," Mr. Garrow wrote in an email.
Dr. King was born and raised in Atlanta. By the late 1950s, he
and others used Atlanta as a base for many anti-segregation
campaigns.
In the 1960s, Dr. King served as co-pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer
Baptist Church until he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. He is
buried across the street from Ebenezer in a national historic site
in Atlanta's Sweet Auburn neighborhood, a once-thriving center of
the city's black community.
Since his death, Dr. King's survivors have been consumed with
legal battles with others and among themselves over claims of
ownership and copyright to King material. Last summer, the family
estate, led by two of Dr. King's sons, Martin Luther III and
Dexter, filed suit against a nonprofit headed by their sister,
Bernice, over the use of Dr. King's intellectual property. An
attorney for the King estate didn't return calls for comment.
Meanwhile, the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site has
seen a drop in visitors, from a high of about 3.3 million in 1992
to 704,000 in 2013.
Organizers of the new center--located about a mile northwest of
Sweet Auburn in a tourist-heavy area--have distanced themselves
from King family squabbles and legal issues. None of the Kings have
been involved in the center's creation, Mr. Shipman said. Ms.
Franklin and other Atlanta leaders developed the idea for a center
honoring the city's civil-rights legacy in the early 2000s.
The King family had planned to put Dr. King's collection of
13,000 documents and artifacts up for auction in 2006. Ms. Franklin
led an effort to stop the auction, collecting about $35 million
from companies, the museum and others to purchase physical property
rights to the material. Family members retained intellectual
property rights, meaning they can charge fees for the right to
reproduce the material.
Material not on display at the center will be stored at
Morehouse College, the historically black university in Atlanta
that was Dr. King's alma mater.
Cameron McWhirter contributed to this article.
Write to Karishma Mehrotra at Karishma.Mehrotra@wsj.com
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