President Trump paid tribute to African-American civil rights leaders in Mississippi on Saturday amid protests and boycotts over his presence at the opening of a museum dedicated to the movement.
A few dozen demonstrators jeered and shouted as the President’s motorcade arrived in Jackson, Miss., for the debut of the state-sponsored institution.
Once inside, Trump addressed a small group of attendees — after touring exhibits that told the story of a state that was at the center of the struggle for equality, as well as its racially charged past.
“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 aside from facing sexual misconduct allegations, has made several overtly racist comments.
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 at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum on Saturday prompted several prominent African-American lawmakers to boycott the event — despite their own roles in the civil rights movement.
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.
Lewis (below) and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) called Trump being at the opening an “insult” and said Trump has deepened racial divides in the country.
Thompson and Lewis noted Trump’s blaming of “both sides” for deadly violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, 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 the museum opening.
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 re-created jail cell, tear-gas canisters and the rifle used to shoot civil rights activist Medgar Evers in 1963.
Trump praised Evers, a World War II veteran, in his remarks for fighting for the “same rights and freedoms that he had defended in the war.”
Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers, was in the audience.
“Here we memorialize the brave men and women who struggled to sacrifice and sacrifice so much so that others might live in freedom,” Trump said.
