Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. Now the Lorraine Motel is the National Civil Rights Museum and Martin Luther King Jr. has a holiday named after him, but then, in 1968, King was not a popular figure with white people. He was a trouble maker, as Representative Ayanna Pressley said: Dr. King wasn’t murdered because he was a preacher, pacifist with a dream, that is revisionist history. He was murdered because he was a radical disruptor of the status quo, considered by the FBI & white America to be a threat to our country.

Sunday afternoon, it feels like a month ago, Michele and I drove from Mountain View Arkansas to Memphis Tennessee. We both were feeling punk, Michele with a head cold and me with a chest cold so we ended up doing not much. This was our third time in Memphis, the first time I didn’t even know about the National Civil Rights Museum, the second time, we didn’t have time, so it was on top of our list this time and we spent most of Monday there. It is not a happy place, partially because it is the site of a murder but more so because it tells the African-American story from the African-American side and that side of the story paints a picture that is not as benign as our whitewashed version.

I’ve written and rewritten these couple of paragraphs several times, mostly talking about the African-American journey and this museum. The journey has been almost impossibly hard and the museum doesn’t try to gloss over that; we are only about a third of the way through the museum when slavery ends and Jim Crow starts. This museum is terrific at reminding us of the astounding journey that African-Americans have taken in a world that has done its damndest to hold them back. I suggest the National Civil Rights Museum to anybody traveling through Memphis.