Founders Park Extends the Mission of the Museum Beyond Its Walls
There’s a quiet power in standing in a place where history happened. And in Memphis, there are few spaces more sacred than the ground outside the National Civil Rights Museum. For decades, visitors have stood outside the Lorraine Motel, eyes fixed on the balcony where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. last stood. But what if that moment—of pause, of reverence, of reckoning—could become a longer conversation? What if that space could expand into something more living, more communal, more purposeful?
That’s what BlueCross Healthy Places at Founders Park will offer when it reopens Fall 2025.
Thanks to BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Foundation, BlueCross Healthy Places at Founders Park and the Legacy Terrace serve as spaces for honoring the legacy of civil rights leaders and fostering community reflection. This enhanced outdoor area will offer enlarged spaces, additional seating, audio and staging capabilities, and landscaped reflection areas. The park will also serve as a venue for large tours, school groups, and signature events. These spaces are designed to be accessible, inclusive hubs for dialogue, education, and connection and to invite visitors to recommit to the principles of equity, justice, and social change.
As we prepare to welcome visitors into the new Founders Park, we choose something meaningful. We choose openness. We choose belonging. We choose the hard work of togetherness over the easy retreat of separation.
Dr. King once asked us to decide between chaos and community. We choose COMMUNITY over chaos.
Legacy Reimagined, History Activated at the National Civil Rights Museum
When the National Civil Rights Museum’s Legacy Building reopens in Spring 2026, it will usher visitors into an urgent and immersive journey through the unfinished business of civil rights. What once served as the Lorraine Motel’s opposite façade now becomes the movement’s modern-day front line, deeply rooted in the final chapter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission laid out in his 1967 book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Through five powerful thematic galleries, poverty, education, housing, gender equity, and nonviolence, visitors are invited to explore the structural inequalities Dr. King warned of and how those injustices still shape American life today.
What sets this renovation apart is its rich and timely examination of civil and human rights movements since Dr. King’s assassination. The exhibitions delve into pivotal moments and strategies that shaped the decades following 1968, including the rise and resonance of the Poor People’s Campaign both then and now. A dedicated gallery explores the investigations into King’s assassination, including newly uncovered documents and longstanding conspiracy theories that continue to raise critical questions about justice and accountability.
A movement timeline gallery charts the evolution of civil rights activism from the 1970s through today. The Freedom Award honoree exhibit celebrates individuals who’ve made lasting contributions to social justice. Visitors will also encounter powerful multimedia narratives from changemakers on community organizing and policy change.
Digital touchscreen surveys prompt visitors to weigh in on present-day strategies and what solidarity looks like in their communities. The museum introduces new flexible gallery and classroom spaces for rapid-response exhibitions that react to today’s unfolding events, ensuring The Legacy experience remains relevant and resonant in real time.
From legacy to liberation, our future we build together.