[4] Support from Delta Air Lines and local philanthropists, including the Atlanta Falcons owner and The Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank, each of whom contributed US$1 million was slow coming.

But in October 2010, the center's chief executive officer, Doug Shipman, announced that the museum would be delayed a year, with a groundbreaking scheduled for 2011 and opening in 2013.

[2] Before the auction took place, however, Mayor Franklin launched a bid to purchase them for $32 million, with Morehouse College owning the collection and the center having the rights to display it.

[11] "Rolls Down Like Water: The American Civil Rights Movement" is an interactive gallery that opens with examples of segregation in the United States as embodied in Jim Crow laws and signs designating facilities as "whites only".

[11] Designed by George C. Wolfe, the Tony Award-winning playwright, the gallery is broken up into multiple sections, each marked by a significant event in the civil rights movement, like Brown vs. Board of Education.

[11] A number of the exhibits are interactive, including a recreation of a lunch counter sit-in complete with headphones that simulate the taunts and threats leveled at activists.

[11] The exhibit includes a rogues gallery of dictators, like Adolf Hitler and Augusto Pinochet, and counters them with images of modern-day activists who work to improve conditions of women and LGBT individuals around the world.