Northern Ireland

Jesse Jackson opens new Museum of Free Derry

The new Museum Of Free Derry was officially by US civil rights leader Rev Jesse Jackson and Fiachra McGuinness, son of the late Martin McGuinness. Also pictured his widow Bernie. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin
The new Museum Of Free Derry was officially by US civil rights leader Rev Jesse Jackson and Fiachra McGuinness, son of the late Martin McGuinness. Also pictured his widow Bernie. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin The new Museum Of Free Derry was officially by US civil rights leader Rev Jesse Jackson and Fiachra McGuinness, son of the late Martin McGuinness. Also pictured his widow Bernie. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin

US civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson laid a wreath yesterday at the Derry grave of former deputy first minister Martin McGuinness.

Rev Jackson was in the city to formally open the new Museum of Free Derry along with Mr McGuinness’s son Fiachra.

The Bogside museum, which has undergone a £2.5m facelift, records the turbulent period from January 1969 until Operation Motorman in July 1972 including the 'Battle of the Bogside', the introduction of internment and Bloody Sunday.

Rev Jackson, who twice ran for the US Democratic presidential nomination, met with politicians as well as the Bloody Sunday families during a two-day visit to Derry.

He also met Bernie McGuinness, wife of the former Sinn Féin MP. After laying a wreath at Mr McGuinness's grave, Rev Jackson paid tribute to him as a transformative leader.

He said the museum was a point of reference linking the city with civil rights struggles in South Africa and the US and connecting Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King with Mr McGuinness and Nobel laureate and former SDLP leader John Hume.

"I am very optimistic about the future here. It is important not to look backwards with fear but forwards with hope,” he said.

Robin Percival, chairman of the Bloody Sunday Trust which manages the museum, said it was decided to hold the official opening yesterday because it was seven years exactly since the publication of the Saville Report into Bloody Sunday.

Lord Saville and his fellow judges found that the 1972 killings were “unjustified and unjustifiable.”

Mr Percival said: “We are proud to have it opened by Jesse L Jackson senior, one of the most respected civil rights campaigners in our lifetimes, and by Fiachra McGuinness in place of his late father Martin who did so much as deputy first minister to help us make this museum a reality."