Talk:National Civil Rights Museum

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 6 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Emmalauren19. Peer reviewers: 0diego0, Zynxo.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:54, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Proposed merger

The [[National Civil Rights Museumlmd,m sfcmd ]] and Lorraine Motel articles are both short stubs about the same building. Both essentially contain the same information, so it seems reasonable to me to merge the two articles, with one left as a redirect to the other. I suggest that the article be at National Civil Rights Museum as that is the current name of the building. JeremyA 19:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. The Lorraine Motel is still the Lorraine Motel and should stand alone from the NCRM. Since their histories differ, we should try to expand the stubs instead of making a messier stub. [[User:ncmkdn cm c SportingFlyer|SportingFlyer]] 01:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

The Lorraine Motel is not still the Lorraine Motel; it is now the National Civil Rights Museum. To paraphrase the current articles Lorraine Motel says that it was a Motel that is now the National Civil Rights Museum, whereas National Civil Rights Museum states that it is a museum that used to be the Lorraine Motel. JeremyA 23:49, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I think that the two should be merged. The Lorraine Motel did not have any historical significance until the assassination of MLK, and the little bit of information here on the hotel could easily and briefly be summed up on the National Civil Rights Museum Page, which needs to be greatly expanded. I agree with the redirect idea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.107.108.149 (talk • contribs)

Merge them, if a user looks up the motel it should lead to National Civil rights museum. their histories are not seperate, theyre the same because the building is the same, just a name change in the building doesnt warrent a different article about the the same thing. Barcode 17:15, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

The Lorraine Motel is quite literally not separate from the Nation Civil Rights Museum. The motel room MLK stayed in is visible through plexiglas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqEL4V2HCzo&t=143 , as you can see here, from within the National Civil Rights museum. Lorraine Motel should redirect to the National Civil Rights Museum, because it is more important in its role as a rallying point of civil rights. As a motel it was utterly unremarkable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.88.234.56 (talk) 19:51, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Protest of Jacqueline Smith

Shouldn't somebody mention that little old lady who lived in the Lorraine Motel and was kicked out to make the museum and sat in front of it protesting for years? Did she die eventually? It's been quite a while since I've been to Memphis. 84.12.85.141 21:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

she's still protesting, i went downtown a few weeks ago and she had some signs up, along with anti-gentrifaction labels Barcode 21:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Her name is Jacqueline Smith, and she is still protesting at the site. I saw her and spoke with her last weekend. I think the protest should be mentioned, but I don't want to add it to the article unless others agree. Danahuff 04:55, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Definitely should be mentioned, if you can find a good reference article to explain her story. AmethystPhoenix 03:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

>>I agree about the need to allow discussion on some of the controversy behind the building of the museum, speaking as someone with a Masters Degree in Industrial Archaeology & a MA (1st) in Social & Political Science. Indeed I blogged the subject and tried to add that to the list of external links but was refused under Wikipedia rules. [Stuart Glendinning Hall http://www.stuart-hall.com/blog/_archives/2006/1/31/1738108.html], 19 April 2007.

http://www.fulfillthedream.net/pages/mlk.jsmith1.html http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p107766_index.html http://www.flickr.com/photos/janms/2170013150/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/12861589@N03/2209073290/ 85.211.75.49 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 04:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I've got a photo of Smith I took in May 2008 I can upload if it'd add to the article. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 09:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I reworded a lot of the work done by 66.162.20.126 to attempt to eliminate the bias there. I'd like to be sure that her protest is mentioned in a non-positive and a non-negative light here, because there are people who agree with her, and there are people who disagree with her. (I fall firmly in the latter camp, as I live two blocks away from her "site" and have much experience of her shouting racial epithets at me on a regular basis.) So while I agree that she should be mentioned, I think this needs to be very carefully done to avoid bias either way. -- Otto (talk) 17:01, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

James Earl Ray "purportedly" fired the shots that killed King

On April 4, 2009, I added the word "purportedly" to the article. Someone removed it three days later. I would like to know on what basis such action was taken. Referring to the Wikipedia page devoted to James Earl Ray, it states plainly that "The King family does not believe Ray had anything to do with the murder of Martin Luther King." If there is a sound reason to remove the word "purportedly" from the Lorraine Motel page, then the page dealing with the convicted killer should be corrected accordingly, shouldn't it? If not, I believe that my edit should be reinstated. BTW, I am quite new at this so please guide me along if I am not proceeding appropriately. 66.130.132.148 (talk) 14:17, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

You are right, there seems to be doubt about whether Ray was the killer or not. The sentence as it was made it sound like there was no doubt at all. I think you were completely correct in raising this concern. However, an encyclopedia is not so much the place to raise spectulations but to report facts. I have re-formulated the sentence in question without using the word "purportedly", which means "it is believed that". If it is preventable I like to try and keep these words referring to believe or speculation out, I find them unencyclopedic most of the time. It is very difficult to figure out how these "believes" came to exist.

Now, the sentence is split into two sentences that only contain hard facts that are undisputed but still tell the story appropriately: (1) The shots were fired from the other side of the street (2) King was killed by these shots (3) James E Ray was convicted of the killing and (4) was sentenced to 99 years in prison. The point you raised about the King family's opinion on the matter is discussed in the article about James Earl Ray. Do you think that is satisfactory? doxTxob \ ^talk 23:35, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Dear doxTxob, I am quite pleased with your intervention. I actually prefer it that way. Thank you. 66.130.132.148 (talk) 12:32, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Deleted Referenced material from captions

A great deal of referenced material was deleted in this edit. While this information should probably find its way into the body of the work, this article is incredibly weak without any depiction explanation of assassination scene. The replaced "A Wide Shot of the Lorraine" neglects the whole point of the photo showing the rooming house where the shots were alleged to have come from. I have never seen a photo that shows those two important locations together. Further conspiracies revolve around Fire Station #2. With such whole destruction of referenced material little wonder this article sucks big time.Americasroof (talk) 15:21, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

So work the material into the body text instead. Captions should be short. Having a couple of paragraphs of material in small print makes it hard to read and makes the article look stupid as well.

Also, note that I moved your material to the picture description itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tn-mlk2.jpg . If you want to find it, it is there. -- Otto (talk) 23:20, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

This article isn't about the assassination. If there's referenced material about it, it belongs on the MLK page, not the page about this building. This article clearly states the building's significance in history, but this article isn't the appropriate place to cover the details of the event. Someone researching the assassination would expect to find the "wide shot" material and other details about the event on the page about that event. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.26.214.245 (talk) 05:13, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Grammar

The main paragraph of the introductory section was a single run-on sentence. I counted twice. One. I've broken it up a bit to make it a little easier to read, and also eliminated unnecessary information (this page not being about the MLK assassination, those details don't need to be in the introduction) and unreferenced material. I also removed the "across the street and up the hill next to a mulberry bush" stuff; the street address of the various locations should be more than enough for someone to find them if they so desire. Please, if it's necessary to add any of that back in, don't do so by simply adding more to what's already a long sentence. Commas, folks. Commas. Periods. Even parentheses. They're good for ya.

Assassination

Much of the talk on this page is related to the presentation and removal of material directly related to the assassination of MLK. There's a dedicated page for that event; someone using Wikipedia to research the event would look there, first. It would be best to include information related to the event on that event's page. If the building has relatively little significance aside from its role in that event, then one would expect the building's page to be relatively short - serving primarily, perhaps, to get a searcher to the comprehensive page on the event itself. No? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.26.214.245 (talk) 05:16, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Ownership of the Lorraine Motel

The Lorraine Motel itself is owned by the Tennessee State Museum and is leased to the Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation. This is documented on the TSM website, and copies of the lease are publicly available. --Chiacomo ^talk 19:05, 29 December 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chiacomo (talk • contribs)

Thanks, I was finding that difficult to follow from the few sources.Parkwells (talk) 16:07, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you have another source? I can't find a reference on either museum website.Parkwells (talk) 20:13, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Article Vandalism

Removed a line stating 'Madeleine Draper is awesome, that is why Martin Luther King, Jr gave her a medal saying how awesome she is a minute before he was assinated.' Recommend locking article to prevent vandalism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.113.118.250 (talk) 05:07, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Orphaned references in National Civil Rights Museum

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of National Civil Rights Museum's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "npr":

• From Freedom Riders: "Get On the Bus: The Freedom Riders of 1961". NPR. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
• From Stand in the Schoolhouse Door: Elliot, Debbie. Wallace in the Schoolhouse Door. NPR. June 11, 2003. Accessed February 19, 2009.
• From Ole Miss riot of 1962: "Integrating Ole Miss: A Transformative, Deadly Riot". NPR. 2012-10-01. Retrieved 2015-03-23.
• From James Hood: Elliot, Debbie. Wallace in the Schoolhouse Door. NPR. June 11, 2003. Accessed June 12, 2013.
• From Franklin McCain: Memmot, Mark (2014-01-10). "Franklin McCain, One Of 'Greensboro Four,' Dies". National Public Radio. Retrieved 2014-02-09.
• From Vivian Malone Jones: Elliot, Debbie. Wallace in the Schoolhouse Door. NPR. June 11, 2003; accessed February 19, 2009.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 01:21, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Cars.

What are those cars doing there? --Yomal Sidoroff-Biarmskii (talk) 07:06, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)

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