Trump ignites backlash for visiting civil rights museum
US President Donald Trump has attended the opening of a civil rights museum in the state of Mississippi, a ceremony boycotted by several African-American leaders in protest of his policies on race relations.
The president's 40-minute visit on Saturday to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum triggered a backlash from top African-American leaders who marched in civil rights rallies in the 1960s to win those rights.
The leaders blasted Trump's tour of the museum as an affront to the spirit of the ceremony.
Black congressman John Lewis, a civil rights icon who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, said on Thursday that he would not go to the museum opening because of Trump’s presence.
“President Trump’s attendance and his hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed in this civil rights museum,” Lewis said in a statement.
Lewis, a Democratic lawmaker from Georgia, also skipped Trump's presidential inauguration in January.
US congressman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, joined Lewis in the boycott.
The two men also cited Trump’s “disparaging comments about women, the disabled, immigrants and National Football League players” and said the president had shown disrespect to those who fought for civil rights in Mississippi.
In Jackson, the capital city of Mississippi, small protests turned out against Trump's presence, which was also boycotted by the city's black mayor and the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a black civil rights organization.
Trump has had a controversial record on race relations. In August, Trump unleashed a firestorm of criticism for saying that both white supremacists and counter-protesters were at fault for the violence at a neo Nazi-led rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one woman died.
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