Rejecting a massive claque of criticism, President Trump went anyway to the opening of the new civil rights museum in Jackson, Mississippi, to praise the “brave men and women” of the civil rights movement. It says something about the partisan politics of the nation that that act took some bravery, too, and Trump was up to the challenge.

The Washington Post reported:

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and was scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the opening, announced Thursday that he would boycott the stage at the public event if Trump were on it. Others called on Trump to change his plans and not attend the opening.

Lewis and other black leaders said the president’s actions and statements since he took office contradicted the values of the civil rights leaders whom the museum was intended to honor. “President Trump’s attendance and his hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed in this civil rights museum,” Lewis and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a joint statement Thursday.

John Lewis

Other headlines went like this:

Trump at opening of Miss. civil-rights museum is ‘insult,’ says Rep. Lewis —Providence Journal

‘He does not deserve to be in Jackson’: Trump’s visit to civil rights museum met with protests —Detroit Free Press

Black officials say they don’t want Trump ‘to tell us what civil rights means in Mississippi’ —ABC News

 

and of course, there were some 200 protestors, yelling, “Mr. President, we don’t need you in Mississippi.”

In the wake of the left’s continuous assassination threats against President Trump, it was probably a good idea for him to go to a closed venue with cameras, instead of an open-air event, as the Washington Post notes that he did. But what’s significant here is that he went – and he went because he wanted to go.

Because presidents never make trips where they think they will reach only a hostile audience, right? President Obama was a master of this, refusing to go to the Texas border during the border surge of 2014, and refusing to go to Baton Rouge during its worst-ever flooding, given the number of conservatives who live in that city.

Trump didn’t follow that political-safety first formula. Against a barrage of criticism, he went even though he was promised about the worst welcome a president can expect.

He went anyway, because he knew there was a difference between the civil rights movement of the 1960s and what it eventually morphed into, becoming basically a partisan auxillary of the far left. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was a registered Republican all his life, led a moral movement that wasn’t about partisan politics, his movement realigned the country to its very foundations as a free country. What’s left of his movement decades later is often called a plantation, which has pretty much kept large cities one-party states brimming with corruption, ensured bad unionized schools which harm black children most of all, targeted inner city neighborhoods for abortion in line with Margaret Sanger’s racist agenda, and enacted welfare policies that break up the black family. Even members of the inner core of civil rights leaders have fallen into this new trap, such as John Lewis, who refused to share a stage with Trump, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who lived up to King’s estimation of him as an opportunist. There are significant exceptions, such as the Rev. Alveda King, King’s niece, who stands up for black children in her fight against abortion, but the press likes to sideline them. 

Trump also knew that preserving the original civil rights movement, with its authentic heroes, such as Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, and King, is important for future generations to look to. By building this museum, children and others, can discard the disgust they must eventually feel about the current parlous state of the civil rights movement and learn about the real civil rights movement, the one that changed America.

Medgar Evers

Trump understood this. He also understood that it’s a president’s job to give gravitas to this original endeavor. And his move promotes racial unity and healing, a sense that Black Americans and their history are a legitimate part of the American experience and not to be isolated from the broad picture.

Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background

The mobs outside howled and the partisan politicians complained, but Trump went through with it anyway. Much to his great credit. He’s not like other presidents.

It was nice to see Trump take the distinguished surgeon and fine cabinet secretary, Dr. Ben Carson with him:

Trump at the Jackson, Mississippi opening of the Civil Rights Museum // PBS