Abstract
The memoir genre offers a unique opportunity for readers to learn about the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) through firsthand narrative accounts of this time in United States history. Memoirs are hybrid in nature as both historical and literary texts that use storytelling methods which encourage readers to make emotional connections to the stories contained within. Similarly, visitor-centered museums exhibiting authentic objects promote emotional connections between people and artifacts. This essay asserts that memoir–particularly in African American literary tradition–impacts audiences in the same way as these museum collections do, while also illustrating the educational value of the genre. I suggest that four qualitative categories of experiencing ‘The Real Thing’ (TRT), a museum studies concept–“self,” “relation,” “presence,” and “surround”–can be applied to how readers interact with two CRM memoirs: Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968) and John Lewis’s Walking with the Wind (1998). Moody’s memoir recounts her experience growing up as an African American woman in rural Mississippi during the mid-twentieth century, highlighting her childhood and eventual direct involvement with the CRM as a college student and activist. Lewis’s memoir tells a similar tale from his own upbringing in Alabama during the same time, as well as outlines his own activism and eventual political involvement. By analyzing these memoirs through the lens of TRT and alongside scholarship from museum studies and literary theory, I argue the effectiveness of memoir as a tool for teaching and learning about Black history and the Civil Rights Movement.