Downtown Museums Commemorate Civil Rights History

The Newseum (555 Pennsylvania Avenue) has two new, timely exhibits on the U.S. civil rights movement:

• “Make Some Noise: Students and the Civil Rights Movement” offers a timeline of events defining the movement and its student organizers, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
• “Civil Rights at 50” shows newspaper front pages and magazine covers and captures the turbulence of 1963 through events such as the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Ala., and the assassination in Mississippi of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. The exhibit will be updated in 2014 and 2015 to cover key civil rights events from 1964 and 1965.

The interactive museum of news and journalism opened the exhibits three weeks before the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 24, and the March for Jobs and Justice on Wednesday, Aug. 28.

Two other Downtown museums—the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), 1250 New York Avenue, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, located on 8th and F streets—opened exhibits in June:

• “American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s” explores the issues that were at the forefront of Ringgold’s experience of racial inequality in the United States during the 1960s and includes several dozen works from the landmark series “American People” (1963–67) and “Black Light” (1967–71), along with related murals and political posters. The exhibit runs through Nov. 10 at NWWA.
• “One Life: Martin Luther King Jr.” marks the 50th anniversary of the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” and King’s “I Have a Dream” speech through a display of historic photographs, prints, paintings and memorabilia. The exhibit will be on display through June 1, 2014 at the National Portrait Gallery.