NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Protesters met President Trump in Mississippi on Saturday at the opening of a museum dedicated to the civil rights movement and state’s past.
About 50 demonstrators rallied outside the building, greeting Trump’s motorcade as he arrived in Jackson, Miss., for the dedication.
Several people chanted “Love trumps hate” and carried signs that read “Resist” and “Dump Trump” as the President was swept into the facility.
Inside, Trump addressed a small group during a dedication ceremony after touring exhibits that told the story of the struggle for equality and the racially charged past of a state that was at the center of the nation’s civil rights movement.
“The civil rights museum records the oppression, cruelty and injustice inflicted on the African-American community, the fight to end slavery, to break down Jim Crow, to end segregation, to gain the right to vote and to achieve the sacred birthright of equality,” Trump said. “That’s big stuff. That’s big stuff. Those are very big phrases, very big words.”
One day earlier, Trump campaigned for Alabama GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore, who is facing sexual misconduct allegations and has made several overtly racist comments during his campaign.
President Trump gets a tour of the newly opened Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss.(SUSAN WALSH/AP)
During a rally in Florence, Ala., in September, a black audience member asked Moore when he thought America was last great.
“I think it was great at the time when families were united — even though we had slavery — they cared for one another,” Moore replied, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Our families were strong, our country had a direction.”
The President’s appearance prompted several African-American lawmakers to boycott Saturday’s event.
The NAACP, calling Trump’s record on civil rights “abysmal,” urged Trump not to attend.
Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and other black lawmakers declined an invitation due to the President’s appearance.
Exhibits on display at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.(JAWEED KALEEM/TNS)
Lewis and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) called Trump attending the opening an “insult” and said Trump has deepened racial divides in the country.
Lewis and Thompson noted Trump’s blaming of “both sides” for deadly violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the summer.
Trump has also criticized NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem in protest of racism and police brutality directed at African-American men.
The President has been praised by former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke and members of the alt-right, which often aligns with white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements.
The national president of the NAACP and the mayor of Jackson also skipped Saturday’s opening.
Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) declined an invitation due to the President’s appearance. (DAVID GOLDMAN/AP)
They said they can’t share a stage with Trump because of his “pompous disregard” for the values embodied by the civil rights movement.
The exhibits in the museum include thousands of artifacts, including the Money, Miss., grocery store door that 14-year-old Emmett Till walked out of in 1955, before being lynched for flirting with a white woman.
There are burned crosses, a recreated jail cell, tear gas canisters and the rifle used to shoot civil rights activist Medgar Evers in 1963.
Evers widow, Myrlie Evers, attended the event.
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