NATCHEZ — The story told by the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum will be the whole truth — even the ugly parts.

Jacqueline K. Dace, the museum’s project manager for Mississippi Department of Archives and History, carried that message throughout her presentation at the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration’s “An Evening to Remember” Thursday night at Trinity Episcopal Church.

“People ask me, ‘Are you going to tell the whole truth? Are you going to tell the ugly parts?” said Dace, an Illinois native whose parents were from Mississippi. “I doubt very seriously they would have brought me to Mississippi if we weren’t going to tell the truth … and I doubt very seriously the state would have invested all this money if we weren’t going to tell the truth.”

Officials broke ground on the state-funded museum in October, and Dace said the now “big hole in downtown Jackson” will be transformed into the first state-sponsored civil rights museum in the country.

The Civil Rights Museum will share a roof with the Museum of Mississippi History and is part of the 2 Mississippi Museums project.

The museum, Dace said,  will feature eight galleries surrounding a central 40-foot tall lighted sculpture named “This Little Light of Mine.”

The various galleries will tell the story of Mississippi’s civil rights struggle, beginning with an exhibit on Mississippi’s freedom struggle, which covers 1721-1865 and topics of slavery, the Black Codes and Mississippi joining the Union as a slave state.

Another galley will cover 1865-1941 and the creation of new black communities, Reconstruction, Ku Klux Klan violence and other events.

Dace said the museum will emphasize giving the visitor the experience of the daily lives of black people living during segregation. For example, she said, what would happen to a black person if they did not step off a sidewalk when they saw a white person coming toward them or obey other imposed social mores.

“We want them to know this is not just about people wanting to sit down at a lunch counter,” Dace said. “We want people to understand that this was a life experience … and it impacted them on a daily basis and what they did and who they were.”

Other galleries will feature stories of the mobilization of the Civil Rights Movement, Emmett Till’s murder, segregation, the White Citizens’ Council, as well as the formation of the Black Panthers, Deacons for Defense and Justice, the March Against Fear and other events.

The museum will also include lynching monoliths inscribed with the names of lynching victims.

“We’re not trying to … show it in its level of graphicness, but this is a reality,” Dace said. “This happened.”

The story the Civil Rights Museum will tell through photographs, interactive media, documents and other exhibitry may not be an easy one to digest for some visitors, Dace said.

The museum recognizes that, she said, and provides a general story told on the outside of the galleries with more in-depth stories on the inside, as well as an open grass area in front of the museum for visitors needing to decompress after their tour.

The design of the last museum gallery is unfinished, Dace said, but will offer a space where visitors can provide feedback and talk about exhibits that inspired them.

The museum is scheduled to open in 2017, in conjunction with Mississippi’s bicentennial celebration.

Also during “An Evening to Remember,” Araminta Stone Johnston, author of “And One Was a Priest: The Life and Times of Duncan M. Gray Jr.,” read passages from her book about the life of the Right Rev. Duncan M. Gray Jr., retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Jackson.

The NLCC continues today with several events planned at the Natchez Convention Center.