In October 2022, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights announced a $48 million expansion that would transform the downtown Atlanta institution from a museum into what its leaders called a national cultural center. The project would add two new wings to the existing building near Centennial Olympic Park, creating gallery and retail space alongside a flexible 10,000 square-foot facility designed for school groups, performances, and community events.
The expansion carried a name that matched its ambition. The center, which opened in 2014 as a 43,000-square-foot museum dedicated to the American civil rights movement and global human rights struggles, had outgrown its original footprint. Annual visitation, educational programming, and demand from schools across the Southeast had exceeded what the building could accommodate.
The King Collection
The most significant addition was a permanent home for the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection — thousands of papers, books, and personal items that King owned between 1944 and 1968. The collection had been housed at Morehouse College but lacked dedicated exhibition space that could make it accessible to the public at scale. The expansion would give these materials a purpose-built environment in a museum whose mission was built around King's legacy.
Funding and Leadership
By September 2022, the center had secured $27 million of the $48 million goal through donations and pledges. Arthur Blank, co-founder of The Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, contributed $15 million — among the largest single gifts in the center's history. The Wilber and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation, led by Tom Glenn, added $5 million.
Jill Savitt, the center's president and CEO, led the fundraising and planning effort. Shirley Franklin, former Atlanta mayor and the center's board president, provided the civic credibility that a project of this scale required. Franklin had been instrumental in the center's original development during her tenure as mayor from 2002 to 2010.
Beyond the Museum
The expansion reflected a deliberate evolution in the center's mission. In addition to public exhibitions, the expanded facility would house programs for K-12 civil rights education, law enforcement human rights training, and workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion curricula. The center was positioning itself not just as a place to learn about the civil rights movement but as an active institution working on the unfinished business of that movement.
The National Center for Civil and Human Rights sits on Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard, adjacent to the Georgia Aquarium and World of Coca-Cola, in the Centennial Olympic Park district. Its neighbors draw millions of visitors annually, and the expansion was designed to capture a larger share of that traffic while serving Atlanta's own communities more deeply.
The $48 million price tag placed the expansion among the most significant cultural investments in downtown Atlanta since the center's original construction. For a city that bills itself as the birthplace of the civil rights movement, the project was an acknowledgment that the story required more space than a single building could hold.
Original reporting by Georgia Public Broadcasting, October 13, 2022.
