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GSO council approves $2 million for civil rights museum building purchase

The restored lunch counter in the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in downtown Greensboro. PAUL GARBER/WFDD

The Greensboro City Council has approved a measure to give $2 million to the International Civil Rights Center & Museum for an expansion. The council approved spending $1 million in a lump-sum payment this month and $250,000 over the next four years for the museum to buy an adjacent building.

The money is contingent on museum leaders providing additional information about the facilities' financing. 

Councilmember Justin Outling says the project is important for the city but financial details are needed.

“Greensboro, in my view, should be the foremost civil rights tourism destination in the country, even exceeding Atlanta, Memphis, because of what happened here,” he says. “So I absolutely love the concept.“

Museum leaders have told the city there is an urgency to the funding as they are trying to get the center listed among the sites on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

Guilford County commissioners have also agreed to give $2 million for the museum's plan. A spokesman for the museum says it should finalize the terms of the deal this month. 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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