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LAS CRUCES MUSEUMS

Branigan Cultural Center opens ‘City of Hope’ exhibition Jan. 20

Lunar New Year celebration is Jan. 21

Posted

Branigan Cultural Center (BCC), 501 N. Main St. downtown, will open a new exhibition, “City of Hope: Resurrection City and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign,” on Friday, Jan. 20, and will host a special lunar new year celebration the next day, the City of Las Cruces said in two news releases.

Admission to the museums and there is no charge to attend either event.

Lunar new year

BCC will host "Lunar New Year Celebration!" 10 a.m.-noon Saturday, Jan. 21. The event will include Blue Dragon Dojo performing the Lion Dance.

The lunar new year begins Sunday, Jan. 22. It is the year of the rabbit, and more specifically, the water rabbit. It is year 4720 in the Chinese calendar.

For more information, contact Elizabeth Montoya at 575-541-2219 and emontoya@lascruces.gov.

City of Hope

This exhibit at BCC “discusses the tent city that was established during the early summer of 1968 at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., (as) people came from across America to live in ‘Resurrection City’ and demand economic opportunities, racial equality and justice,” the city said.

The collaborative poster exhibit was coordinated by the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit Service.

The exhibit closes Saturday, April 1.

The Poor People’s Campaign began May 12 and continued until June 24, 1968. “Resurrection City” was set up on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on May 21, and even had its own zip code (20013). It had several thousand “residents” until they were evicted June 24 by Washington, D.C. police.

“A year earlier, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), led by Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, declared poverty a national human rights issue,” the news release said. “SCLC made plans for a Poor People’s Campaign – a grassroots, multiracial movement that would draw the thousands of people to Washington, D.C. They decided to proceed with the gathering despite the King’s assassination on April 4, 1968.”

Posters in the exhibit detail the campaign and Resurrection City.

BCC, accessible from RoadRUNNER Transit Route 1 Stop 1, is open 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Saturday.

For additional information, call 575-541-2154 and visit www.lascruces.gov/museums.


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