A civil rights icon’s childhood home will not be a museum after opposition from her descendants WSOC TV [Video]

NEW ORLEANS — (AP) — After Candice Henderson-Chandler moved to New Orleans and bought her first house in 2021, she learned it had played a key role in the city’s civil rights history and was the childhood home of a prominent activist, Oretha Castle Haley. Henderson-Chandler, who is Black, soon founded a nonprofit and planned to convert part of the property into a museum to celebrate this history.

She also listed the property on the rental site Airbnb marketing its civil rights legacy and sold museum memberships and civil rights-era themed products like “Freedom Fighter” citrus candles on her nonprofit’s website.

But on Thursday, the majority of the New Orleans City Council rejected Henderson-Chandler’s plans in a vote that would have changed the zoning to allow for a museum. Opponents of the museum warned it was yet another attempt by outside interests to commodify and profit from the city’s rich Black cultural heritage. Three of Haley’s …