A $2.3 million endowment is being directed to support educational programs operated by the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. The funding will go to outreach programs dedicated to educating residents about the past, present and future of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.
At a small, private ceremony over-looking construction of the Mississippi Civil Right Museum in Jackson, officials from the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute, the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation and the state Department of Archives and History were presented with an endowment from the William K. Kellogg Foundation in the amount of $2.3 million.
William Buster is the Director of the Mississippi and New Orleans Programs for Kellogg. He says the funding is part of the Foundation's ongoing commitment to improving the health and educational well-being of children in the state.
"This Museum could serve as an opportunity." Buster says. "Mississippi has such a deep history in civil rights and so teaching the children of Mississippi its deep rich history, not all the good [and] some of the not so good and the tough, is critical to making sure that state and the state's children grow up to be healthy citizens."
Among the many educational programs the endowment will make possible, it will fund a summer training course that will help educators to teach students about the civil rights movement, using the museum's resources. Lucy Allen is the Director of Museums at the Department of Archives and History.
"These documents, these letters, these films, these artifacts, they are the place that can help enrich these stories, and it would be good to use the primary resources in the classroom." says Allen. "That's what the teacher school will do."
The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and its counterpart, the Mississippi History Museum, are slated to open in 2017.
