The National Civil Rights Museum was a breathtaking experience. The exhibits inside were meticulously put together and perfectly told the story of the movement. Their location inside the Lorraine Hotel made the experience that much more memorable.

When you walked into the museum, you didn’t even notice you were in the hotel until you walked into a side room that happened to be the historic room 306. They had reconstructed the hotel rooms to allow you to enter them and see them how they were on that day and look out the balcony as they did in the famed ‘pointing picture.’ The artifacts that had been collected and added to the collection, only made the museum more beautiful.

When you walked across the street into the second part of the museum that was the boarding house that Ray stayed in, the feeling just got eerie. They had opened up the room where he stayed and let you see the bathroom where it happened and look out the same windows he did. They had also recovered numerous artifacts from his trial.

In reflection, the trip was an amazing experience. None of us were ready for the emotional toll all of this would have on us, but I think that it’s worth the pain for a few days. The information we’ve all collected in this short week is just a drop in the bucket, but I’m sure that it has sparked a real interest in us, as a group, wanting to know more about our ancestors and their struggles to make our lives easier.