Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI)

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) is a museum, a place of research, a teaching facility and an acknowledged learning center for people of all ages and backgrounds. Since opening in 1992, BCRI has been visited by more than two million people from all 50 states and around the world. BCRI’s mission is to promote civil and human rights worldwide through education. The permanent exhibition is a self-directed journey through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s and on to the human rights struggles of today. This walk through history begins in the Barriers Gallery, which conveys the inequities of life for blacks and whites under segregation, and culminates when visitors join the “walk to freedom” in the Milestones Gallery that chronicles major events and achievements in 1963 and beyond. The Human Rights Gallery features interactive multimedia stations that link the struggle for equality in Birmingham to movements for human rights throughout the world. The Richard Arrington, Jr. Resource Gallery is a state-of-the-art, computerized, interactive learning center where visitors can access video clips from the BCRI Oral History Project and other documents. Periodic changing exhibitions are featured in the Odessa Woolfolk Gallery.