(AP) — The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and the Museum of Mississippi History will be free to the public on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
FedEx Corporation is supporting free admission, according to a museum press release. The museums also were offering free admission Sunday.
The museums will open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, visitors must wear masks and observe social distancing guidelines.
The museums will also be holding virtual events to celebrate the holiday.
At 6 p.m. on Monday, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Facebook page will live stream the museum’s annual “MLK Night of Culture” program Writer and poet C. Leigh McInnis will headline the event. It will include live painting, music and spoken word performances by local artists.
This year’s theme is “I Am a Man,” a declaration of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strikers. King joined activists Rev. James Lawson, T.O. Jones and others in support of the sanitation strike.
A new special exhibition, I AM A MAN: Civil Rights Photographs in the American South, 1960–1970, will open at the museums Saturday, Jan. 30. It will feature a wide range of photographs capturing key events of the Civil Rights Movement across the South, including James Meredith’s integration of the University of Mississippi and the sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis.
At 6 p.m. on Tuesday, the New Stage Theatre production The Debate for Democracy, a conversation between Martin Luther King Jr. organizer Ella Baker, and activist Fannie Lou Hamer, will livestream on the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Facebook page.