Cut Chain Opens Museum at Site of King’s Slaying

Participants cut a chain rather than a ribbon Saturday to open a museum at the motel where civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was slain.

“Let the chains fall with a tremendous, thunderous, crashing to the ground to set our minds and hearts free,” said state Judge D’Army Bailey, a leader of a 10-year effort to build the museum.

The crumbling Lorraine Motel, where King was shot in 1968, was bought at a foreclosure auction in 1982 by citizens who turned it into the National Civil Rights Museum, a reminder of one of the bleaker sides of America’s past.

While focused on the 1950s and ‘60s, the museum includes displays that trace the struggle for black civil rights from the days of slavery.

Much of the museum’s story is told through photographs and drawings, but visitors are surrounded at times by the sights and sounds of struggle in the streets. News films show young protesters being beaten for sitting at an all-white lunch counter.

“You start to wonder even though you lived through it. How could someone hate so much,” said visitor Nellie Powell.

The $9.2-million museum was financed by state and local taxpayers and by private donations.