Its mission is to document, exhibit the history of, and educate the public about the American Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. state of Mississippi between 1945 and 1970.

[8] In 2003, the Associated Press reported that the abandoned former Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) building near Jackson State University might also be used.

African Americans in Mississippi, accustomed to exclusion from museum efforts, were wary of backing the proposal for fear of created a white-washed version of the state's difficult civil rights struggle.

[17] In November 2006, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour proposed creating a $500,000 state Department of Archives and History commission to develop plans for the civil rights museum.

[19] The joint committee said the museum should be about 112,500 square feet (10,450 m2) in size, supported by a private foundation, and that $500,000 should be appropriated to begin planning.

[27] LaPaglia and Associates, a consulting firm, assisted the committee in its work (although it was paid from private donations and not state funds).

[34] Vernon Dahmer Park in Hattiesburg was the consultant's second choice, followed by three sites in downtown Jackson (one near the Old State Capital Museum, one near Smith-Wills baseball stadium, and another on Farish Street).

[35] Supporters also said that the museum would open in two or three years, once the state legislature approved public funding for the public-private partnership designed to finance its construction.

State Senator David Lee Jordan said he would submit legislation to have the museum built in Greenwood (near where 14-year-old Emmett Till was tortured and murdered on August 28, 1955, for flirting with a white woman, an event that sparked the modern civil rights movement).

[41] By now, the Associated Press was reporting, the museum would cost $73 million, have 73,650 square feet (6,842 m2) of space, and include exhibits, gift shop, meeting rooms, a memorial garden, and a theater.

[42] The museum was expected to take three to four years to finish, with the biggest issue being the mission (how geographically narrow its focus might be, and how broad the time period) and how to build the collection.

[45] Justice Anderson blamed the poor economy for the lack of movement, and the governor's office said it had held several meetings in the first eight months of the year about the museum project.

He advocated that the site selection be reconsidered, and Justice Anderson said he believed that a museum board of directors would have the power to make that reconsideration.

Governor Barbour had pressed ahead not with the museum but rather with a $2.1 million "Mississippi Civil Rights Trail" of historic markers.

[46] Reacting to the Associated Press article, the editor of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tennessee (location of the National Civil Rights Museum) noted, "Mississippi's leadership, however, has no excuse for the fact that there is no plan in place, no artifact collection and no governance for the project.

In an interview with The Weekly Standard neoconservative newsmagazine, Barbour appeared to minimize the oppressiveness of racial intolerance in Mississippi when he characterized the White Citizens' Council in his hometown of Yazoo City was merely "an organization of town leaders" that kept more radical anti-integrationist elements (like the Ku Klux Klan) at bay.

The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus held public hearings to discuss possible locations,[52] with backers of the Greenwood site making the strongest effort.

[56] Similar bond legislation was filed in the state Senate, although it provided only $25 million and only funded the civil rights museum.

[61] The funding structure reflected state senators' worries that the total cost of the civil rights and history museum, after acquiring collections and building exhibits, could top $100 million.

He called for the state to pay the cost of constructing the museum, but for a 50-50 public-private fund-raising scheme for acquiring collections and building exhibits.

[74] Architectural drawings for the building's interior as well as a number of conceptual proposals for the exterior were developed by April 2012, and taken around the state to seek citizen input.

[75] Forums were also held at the same time to solicit feedback on what the museum should exhibit, collect artifacts, and record oral histories.

Visitors first move through an exhibit on the slave trade, then through a section on how the Emancipation Proclamation and Reconstruction created African American communities that began to thrive.

Some protesters chanted "No Trump, no hate, no KKK in the USA", while others stood by mute, their mouths covered by stickers featuring the Confederate battle flag.

[82] The theme of Gallery 1 is the "Mississippi Freedom Struggle,"[82] which documents the history, culture, and lives of black people in the state from the first arrival of African slaves through the end of the Civil War.

[90] Part of this gallery is dominated by an artificial tree with sprawling limbs, from which hang images from the Jim Crow era.

This gallery, titled "A Closed Society",[82] contains two small immersive theaters, where short films document the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education[87] and the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

[82] Gallery 5's theme is "A Tremor in the Iceberg",[82] a reference to the way early civil rights struggles between 1960 and 1962 foretold greater upheaval.

[87] "I Question America", the theme of Gallery 6, documents the critical years of 1963 and 1964, and contains a recreation of a rural church where visitors can see a short film about Freedom Summer.

[92] On exhibit here is the bullet-riddled pickup truck owned by Vernon Dahmer, a civil rights leader who died in 1966 after his home was attacked and burned to the ground by the Ku Klux Klan.