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| Location | 460 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard Savannah, Georgia, United States |
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| Website | rmgcivilrightsmuseum |
The Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum is a museum in Savannah, Georgia, United States. Named after Ralph Mark Gilbert, the museum traces the history of the African American community in the city, from slavery to the present day, with an emphasis on the civil rights movement.
Ralph Mark Gilbert was a Baptist pastor and civil rights leader who served as the pastor at First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia from 1939 to 1956. [1] The church had been established in the 1770s, making it one of the oldest black churches in the country. [2] According to Andrew Billingsley, Gilbert is "generally considered the father of the civil rights movement in Savannah." [3] He served as the president of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP from 1942 to 1950 and was the organizer of the Georgia Conference of the NAACP. Gilbert also challenged the white primary system in the state at the time and organized voter registration drives for African Americans in the city. [1] In 1950, W. W. Law became the president of the Savannah chapter, and it was largely his efforts that led to the creation of the civil rights museum. [1] A special-purpose local-option sales tax was instituted by Chatham County in 1993 for the purposes of funding this museum, and a nonprofit organization headed by Law assumed control of the museum. The museum is housed in a former bank building which had been built in 1914 and had also served as the headquarters for the NAACP chapter. [1] [4]
The museum officially opened in August 1996 as part of a four-day celebration. [5] Festivities and events included a "jubilee gala", a meeting at First African Baptist that included a historical reenactment of a meeting during the civil rights movement, and a march to the museum. [5] Features in the museum include a lunch counter (similar to those in lunch counter protests), photos of African-American businesses in the city, and an exhibit dedicated to Laurel Grove South Cemetery, a historic cemetery for African Americans in the city. [4]
Martin Luther King Sr. was an African-American Baptist pastor, missionary, and an early figure in the Civil Rights Movement. He was the father and namesake of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He was the senior pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church from 1931 to 1975.
Wyatt Tee Walker was an African-American pastor, national civil rights leader, theologian, and cultural historian. He was a chief of staff for Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1958 became an early board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He helped found a Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) chapter in 1958. As executive director of the SCLC from 1960 to 1964, Walker helped to bring the group to national prominence. Walker sat at the feet of his mentor, BG Crawley, who was a Baptist Minister in Brooklyn, NY and New York State Judge.
The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a protest to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The sit-in campaign, coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, was notable for its early success and its emphasis on disciplined nonviolence. It was part of a broader sit-in movement that spread across the southern United States in the wake of the Greensboro sit-ins in North Carolina.
Xernona Clayton Brady is an American civil rights leader and broadcasting executive. During the Civil Rights Movement, she worked for the National Urban League and Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where she became involved in the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Later, Clayton went into television, where she became the first African American from the southern United States to host a daily prime time talk show. She became corporate vice president for Turner Broadcasting.
Mary Burnett Talbert was an American orator, activist, suffragist and reformer. In 2005, Talbert was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Francys Johnson is an American civil rights attorney, pastor and educator. He is in private practice as an attorney in Statesboro, Georgia. He has lectured on constitutional and criminal law, civil rights and race and politics at Savannah State University and Georgia Southern University.
First African Baptist Church, located in Savannah, Georgia, claims to be derived from the first black Baptist congregation in North America. While it was not officially organized until 1788, it grew from members who founded a congregation in 1773. Its claim of "first" is contested by the Silver Bluff Baptist Church, Aiken County, South Carolina (1773), and the First Baptist Church of Petersburg, Virginia, whose congregation officially organized in 1774.
The Albany Movement was a desegregation and voters' rights coalition formed in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. This movement was founded by local black leaders and ministers, as well as members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The groups were assisted by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). It was meant to draw attention to the brutally enforced racial segregation practices in Southwest Georgia. However, many leaders in SNCC were fundamentally opposed to King and the SCLC's involvement. They felt that a more democratic approach aimed at long-term solutions was preferable for the area other than King's tendency towards short-term, authoritatively-run organizing.
Westley Wallace Law was an American civil rights leader from Savannah, Georgia. He was president of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP and made great strides in desegregation through nonviolent resistance from 1950 to 1976. He spent much of the rest of his life advocating for African-American history and culture in Savannah. He established the Savannah-Yamacraw Branch of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, the King-Tisdell Cottage Museum, the Beach Institute of African American Culture, and the Negro Heritage Trail Tour.
Ralph Mark Gilbert was an American civil rights leader and a Baptist minister.
Earl Theodore Shinhoster was a Black civil rights activist in Savannah, Georgia.
The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) was an American civil rights organization in Birmingham, Alabama, which coordinated boycotts and sponsored federal lawsuits aimed at dismantling segregation in Birmingham and Alabama during the civil rights movement. Fred Shuttlesworth, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, served as president of the group from its founding in 1956 until 1969. The ACMHR's crowning moment came during the pivotal Birmingham campaign which it coordinated along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the spring of 1963.
Lonnie C. King Jr. was an American civil rights leader. Beginning in 1960, he launched the Atlanta Student Movement, wrote the Appeal for Human Rights, and subsequently started the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights. His work led to the desegregation of Atlanta and continued advocacy has brought further education to America regarding present-day racism and the struggles of the civil rights movement.
Wheat Street Baptist Church is a historic black Baptist church located in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1869, the current building was constructed in 1921 and is located adjacent to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park. The church is notable for the role it played in the Civil Rights Movement, especially under the leadership of William Holmes Borders, who served as pastor of the church from 1937 to 1988.
Maxine (Atkins) Smith born in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, was an academic, civil rights activist, and school board official.
Samuel Woodrow Williams was a Baptist minister, professor of philosophy and religion, and Civil Rights activist. Williams was born on February 12, 1912, in Sparkman then grew up in Chicot County, Arkansas. An African American, Williams attended Morehouse College where he received his bachelor's degree in philosophy and later attended Howard University earning his master's degree in divinity.
Amos Cleophilus Brown is an African American pastor and civil rights activist. He is the president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP, and has been the pastor of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco since 1976. Brown was one of only eight students who took the only college class ever taught by Martin Luther King Jr. He serves on the board of the California Reparations Task Force.
The New Year's Day March in Greenville, South Carolina was a 1,000-man march that protested the segregated facilities at the Greenville Municipal Airport, now renamed the Greenville Downtown Airport. The march occurred after Richard Henry and Jackie Robinson were prohibited from using a white-only waiting room at the airport. The march was the first large-scale movement of the civil rights movement in South Carolina and Greenville. The march brought state-wide attention to segregation, and the case Henry v. Greenville Airport Commission (1961) ultimately required the airport's integration of its facilities.
The Atlanta sit-ins were a series of sit-ins that took place in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Occurring during the sit-in movement of the larger civil rights movement, the sit-ins were organized by the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights, which consisted of students from the Atlanta University Center. The sit-ins were inspired by the Greensboro sit-ins, which had started a month earlier in Greensboro, North Carolina with the goal of desegregating the lunch counters in the city. The Atlanta protests lasted for almost a year before an agreement was made to desegregate the lunch counters in the city.
Reverend Cecil Augustus Ivory was a Presbyterian minister, disability rights activist and sit-in leader during the Civil rights movement.