With Trump Visit, Protest May Follow Opening of Civil Rights Museum

A day long anticipated, and for much longer doubted, will finally be here on Saturday: the grand opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, the only state-sponsored civil rights museum in the country.

Dignitaries of the movement — including Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, and Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers — are scheduled to speak. Lesser-known veterans of the movement, who had been jailed or beaten, plan on attending, too.

And then on Monday another guest was announced: President Trump.

To some who see the museum’s opening as the fulfillment of a hard-fought dream, the president’s visit is seen as a tolerable distraction or even welcomed as an honor. To others, who see the president as racially divisive and hostile to many things they care about, the announced visit was, said Jacqueline Amos, the chairwoman of the Hinds County Democratic Executive Committee, “a slap in the face.”