Harlem civil rights museum highlights the North's forgotten history

"Driving the news: The museum will anchor the newly dedicated Urban League Empowerment Center, a $300M development that includes 170 units of affordable housing, minority-owned business space, and the Whitney M. Young Center for Leadership. The museum opens in 2026, timed to the nation's 250th anniversary. It will feature an interactive permanent installation, rotating exhibitions, and community spaces aimed at turning visitors into what Morial calls "agents of change.""

""The assault on truth in museums and libraries is absolutely racially motivated," he said. "It's erasure - but it won't work. People are more determined than ever to tell our story." Context: Morial's argument lands in a political climate where Americans are increasingly anxious about democratic instability and the erosion of civil rights. Against that backdrop, he sees the museum not just as a historical archive but as a counterweight to present-day efforts to restrict rights, suppress history and narrow who counts as fully American."

The museum will anchor the Urban League Empowerment Center, a $300 million development that includes 170 units of affordable housing, minority-owned business space, and the Whitney M. Young Center for Leadership. The institution will open in 2026, coinciding with the nation's 250th anniversary, and will feature an interactive permanent installation, rotating exhibitions, and community spaces designed to make visitors agents of change. Leaders present the museum as a response to intensified efforts to erase or sanitize history and to contemporary threats to rights. Harlem's historic civil rights infrastructure and nearby cultural partners will form part of the center's ecosystem.

Read at Axios