MEMPHIS, Tenn — The location where Martin Luther King Junior was shot, a chronicling of the American civil rights movement and where the story of the ongoing struggle for human rights is told all bring to mind the National Civil Rights Museum.
The museum is a place where many Memphians oftentimes find themselves visiting again and again, able to reflect on the past.
It's also one of Memphis' top tourist attractions, and it has a new president to continue its work to address today's conversations around racial reconciliation.
"As somebody who has studied and tried to delve deeply into civil rights and African-American history and community building there's not a more special place in this country than the National Civil Rights Museum," said the new museum president Dr. Russell Wigginton.
Wigginton has served on the museum's board.
"I think there's opportunity for us to be an important thought leader in national conversations around racial reconciliation," Wigginton explained.
It was at the museum where Memphis activists held civil disobedience trainings around the same time as multiple George Floyd protests last summer.
Wigginton said recent headlines and debates on police brutality and racial injustices gives the museum an opportunity to expand its role and to galvanize a spirit of civility and decency in all types of people.
"The fact that it's in Memphis in all of its rich history and complex and difficult history doing that at home and modeling that and expanding that to the rest of the country is the challenge and the vision that I am focused on," he said.
The new president shared what the museum means for visitors and Memphians.
"People like to have their family reunions at a place like that right. It pulls for community, it pulls for family, personal and national pride."
Wigginton begins his new role on August 1st. He also adds he wants the museum to help highlight the distinctiveness of Memphis.
Wigginton succeeds Terri Lee Freeman as museum president and will resign his museum board post to assume his new leadership role.