Harlem gets a new museum next Saturday. The Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem opens to the public on Saturday, November 14, on the fourth floor of 117 West 125th Street, the new headquarters of the National Urban League. The museum describes itself as New York's first museum dedicated to civil rights and one of the first in the country to focus on the history of the movement in the North.

The National Urban League, which was founded in New York City in 1910 to support Black families arriving during the Great Migration, established the museum. In 2025 the League moved its city headquarters into a new 17-story building on West 125th Street, a mixed-use tower with offices, apartments and stores, and the museum fills one floor of it. For an organization that started in Harlem more than a century ago, the museum calls the move a homecoming.

What is inside

The permanent exhibition, Moving History Forward, runs through eight galleries. It starts in the 1500s, centuries before the marches most visitors know from the South, and follows the fight for civil rights in Northern cities up to the present day. Visitors enter through an orientation gallery called Freedom Square and a lobby of murals called Changemakers. Five galleries then move through time:

  • Roots of the Urban North (1500 to 1900): slavery in the North, the Underground Railroad, anti-slavery groups, uprisings and the free Black communities built before and after the Civil War. Among the moments it marks is the 1712 slave revolt in Manhattan.
  • The Great Migration (1900 to 1970): the two waves that brought nearly six million people from the South to cities in the Northeast, Midwest and West.
  • The Harlem Renaissance (1920 to 1940): the artistic and cultural movement that centered on these blocks.
  • Fighting for Justice (1940 to 1960) and Finding Our Way (1970 to the present).

A resource gallery called Seat at the Table closes the visit.

The first special exhibition is about Harlem itself

The museum also has a gallery for changing shows, and the first one, Thriving! Harlem as Homeplace, opens with the museum and runs through May 17, 2027. It looks at the places, communities and people that have made Harlem a neighborhood, and asks visitors to think about what keeps a neighborhood alive. Its centerpiece is Dared to Be Black and Shining, a 2025 work by the Harlem-born artist D. Lammie-Hanson, who draws portraits in metalpoint, using fine silver or gold wire. The piece re-creates the neighborhood of her childhood, with members of her family as its subjects.

Grand opening weekend, Nov. 14 and 15

The museum is marking its first two days with music, dance and art activities included with admission:

  • Saturday, Nov. 14: the Kevin Oliver Jr. Jazz Trio from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the Harlem Swing Dance Society from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., zine-making, jigsaw puzzles, jewelry-making, face painting and creative writing rooms from noon to 4 p.m., and DJ Relly Rell from 2 to 5 p.m.
  • Sunday, Nov. 15: the jazz trio again from noon to 3 p.m., swing dancing from 1 to 3 p.m., the same art activities from noon to 4 p.m., and West African drumming and dance from 3 to 5 p.m.

Tickets, hours and tours

General admission is $20 for adults 25 to 61 and $15 for seniors 62 and up, visitors 13 to 24, visitors with disabilities, and active military and veterans. Children 12 and under get in free, as do caretakers accompanying a visitor with a disability. The museum recommends buying tickets online before you go; they are also sold at the first-floor reception desk.

The museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m., and is closed Monday and Tuesday. Last admission is at 4:30 p.m. It will also close for Thanksgiving week, Nov. 25 to 29, and again from Dec. 23 to Jan. 3.

Free 30-minute guided tours are included with admission every day the museum is open: at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, and at 11:30 a.m. on Thursdays and Saturdays. Each tour takes up to 20 people, first come, first served, and meets at the fourth-floor gallery entrance. Group visits are booked separately.

Getting there

Enter through the first-floor lobby at 117 West 125th Street and take the elevator to the fourth floor. The building has step-free entry, elevators and gender-neutral restrooms. The closest subway stop is 125th Street on the 2 and 3, about a five-minute walk east of the museum, though that station has no elevator. For a step-free trip, the A, B, C and D station at 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue has elevators and is about a ten-minute walk. Metro-North riders can walk west from the 125th Street station, and the M60 SBS, M100, M101 and M102 buses all stop nearby.

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