To longtime civil rights leader Homer Floyd, William Quantrill was a terrorist, plain and simple.
Quantrill led the massacre of 180 civilian men and boys in Lawrence, Kan. during the Civil War. Quantrill also kidnapped runaway slaves and returned them to bondage.
So when Floyd heard that Quantrill's revolver from the Kansas bloodbath was a centerpiece of an NRA-sponsored exhibit about guns at the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, he thought it was "grossly insensitive."
Harrisburg residents have been marching in the streets against violence and mourning their dead, he said, so the museum's decision to partner with the National Rifle Association to highlight guns struck a nerve.
Homer Floyd
"It seems that we're working at cross purposes when one or our local institutions is hosting that kind of exhibit," said Floyd, who attended the University of Kansas before moving to Pennsylvania, where he became the"We thought we ought to speak our minds on it."
Floyd is organizing a protest against longtime head of the state's Human Relations Commission.
, which was designed to tie in with the NRA's Great American Outdoor show at the Farm Show Complex. Guns and Lace is also the name of an NRA initiative to encourage women to learn to shoot.
The protest will coincide with an NRA reception planned at the museum from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday. Floyd said he and other members of the Pennsylvania Diversity Coalition plan to stand outside the museum with signs to make a statement.
"We plan to stand in front of the building during the hours of the event," he said. "This is a publicly owned institution. We think it's just a bad message to be sending."
The city owns the museum building and most of the Civil War artifacts inside, but the museum is run by a nonprofit board. Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse has been engaged in a long-running dispute with the museum over rent, hotel taxes and the museum's connection to the city.Adding insult to injury,
the NRA gave the museum a $25,000 grant this year after a dispute with the mayor over the same grant.
Wayne Motts, the museum's director, said the museum's mission is to preserve and exhibit artifacts, photographs and archival documents from a very violent time in our nation's past.
"Many items held and displayed here have a violent history," Motts said. "That is no different than a lot of other museums. Take for example the derringer which John Wilkes Booth used to assassinate President Lincoln held by the National Park Service and displayed at Ford's Theater."
Motts said Quantrill's Colt revolver, which reportedly fell out of his pocket during the Kansas massacre, is no different than other artifacts and displays at countless other museums and historical repositories.
The museum already owned the gun and it has been exhibited before. But the gun's rollout in a partnership with the NRA was "particularly revolting," Papenfuse said, because the exhibit is a "sellout to modern day gun manufacturers.
"Museums shouldn't let sponsors dictate the content of their exhibits any more than newspapers should let advertisers dictate the content of their journalism," he said.
Last month,
the Canadian War Museum was criticized for accepting funding from one of the world's largest arms manufacturers for a speakers series and exhibit devoted to recent conflicts.
Papenfuse also said the Quantrill artifact is not properly contextualized in the exhibit.
"Why are we celebrating the gun of a mass-murdering, racist sociopath?" he said. "Cities from Baltimore to New Orleans are taking down their Confederate monuments. We are putting up new ones."
Motts said Quantrill's gun was being shown along with other guns manufactured by Colt and four other manufacturers. The NRA-sponsored exhibit was intended to highlight guns used during the Civil War made by manufacturers that are still in business today.
"Many of the firearms in this exhibition are identified to Union and Confederate soldiers, as well as prominent statesmen," he said "We are exhibiting weapons from both sides of the war as part of the presentation."
The information presented with Quantrill's gun doesn't delve into details about the 1863 atrocity, Motts said.
"We have identified the revolver for who owned the weapon and its significance," he said. "This is not and exhibition interpreting guerrilla warfare during the conflict so it is a simple label of identification."
UPDATE:
This article was updated to include information about a controversy in Canada.
