Marking the Past: Civil Rights Tourism and the Mississippi Freedom Trail

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay explores the rhetorical framing of civil rights tourism in Mississippi, a state that has invested considerable resources towards developing an infrastructure for attracting heritage tourists. Focusing specifically on a series of historical markers known as the Mississippi Freedom Trail (MFT), the essay identifies three dominant narratives that shape visitors’ understanding of the state’s civil rights history: (1) representations of violence against Mississippi’s civil rights leaders, (2) the role of agitation and community organizing, and (3) the (dis)connections between the past and the present. Although the MFT increases public awareness of the Mississippi Movement, it under-emphasizes the role women played and privileges modes of activism that embraced the very system that disenfranchised Black Americans. For these reasons, we argue that the MFT is limited in its ability to speak to contemporary racial struggles even as it provides a platform for confronting racist symbols in public memory sites.