The National Center for Civil and Human Rights opened in 2014 on Pemberton Place, next to the Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola, on land that the city assembled as part of its downtown revitalization. It was the culmination of a long campaign to give the civil rights story a permanent national home in the city that produced so much of it.

What is inside

The center's galleries walk visitors through the legal and human machinery of segregation and the movement that dismantled it, including an immersive lunch counter experience that recreates the sit-ins through sound and vibration. Its human rights wing links the American struggle to contemporary movements around the world. The Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection — a trove of King's papers and books held by the college — is displayed in rotation at the center.

Where it sits

The center is part of a downtown corridor of civil rights sites, and it works alongside the older anchors of the story a few miles east on Auburn Avenue: the King Center, Ebenezer Baptist Church and the historic Sweet Auburn district.