“Over the past three years, new and newly revamped civil rights museums have appeared across the Deep South, proving to be popular tourist attractions and economic engines.
But this is not happening without difficulty. Historically, due to the horrific and humiliating nature of slavery and the post-Civil War Jim Crow era, the South has been very slow to publicly recognize these atrocities, much less build expensive museums on the subject to attract local or far-away visitors.
Many southerners have feared that shining a light on the region’s pre-civil rights past will bring a new wave of blame their way, but now the tourism benefits are hard to pass up. Civil rights tourism could be an economic lifeline, but it requires confronting some ugly truths.”
This is an excerpt from an article first published by Sarah Enelow on Skift. Read the original article here: The Rise of Civil Rights Tourism in America’s Deep South
