4 April 1968. A date we all should remember.
A place we all should remember.
This site now houses the National Civil Rights Museum. After watching a brief film, you enter the first gallery of the permanent exhibitions – A Culture of Resistance. As you walk on a floor map of Africa, Europe, and the Americas, you learn about the wealth created by slaves and the slave trade. The gallery covers a period from the early 17th century to the start of the American Civil War. In addition to tracing the creation of national wealth and the dehumanizing nature of slavery, visitors should also remind themselves that, while it is often the last word, a decision of the Supreme Court is not necessarily the right word. In 1857, in the famous Dred Scott decision, the Court ruled by a 7-2 vote that a slave was property and that African Americans were not citizens.
History continues tracing the Civil War and the rise of Jim Crow. Once again, it was a 7-1 Supreme Court decision allowing the practice of separate but equal – with Justice John Harlan the only dissenter – in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson that permitted these blatantly discriminatory practices. This decision, rendered in 1896, remained the law of the land until 1954 when a unanimous Court finally ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separate was inherently unequal. (Those opposing the decision latched onto the phrase “all deliberate speed” to continue impeding progress on that front.)
In “The Year They Walked” you have a chance to revisit the Montgomery bus boycott. You can board a bus, sit by a statue of Rosa Parks,
activating a recording of a bus driver commanding her to move, and ultimately hear a recording of the speech given by Reverend King the night before the boycott began. After learning about the sit-ins that began in the late fifties and early sixties, you enter an exhibit where you are reminded of the many sacrifices – in life and limb – made by the Freedom Riders.
There’s also a spot where you can listen to verbal histories from some of the people arrested. As you proceed, the exhibits continue tracing the history of the Civil Rights movement (including, of course, the 1963 March on Washington) without neglecting other protests and issues of the times then and the time now.
The penultimate exhibit is “I Am A Man.” Its focus is the Memphis Sanitation Workers strike in 1968. This is the cause that brought King to Memphis on that fateful April night. The striking workers wore signs that read “I Am A Man.” The exhibit includes a garbage truck of the era and a film of King’s “Mountaintop” speech.
You culminate your tour with a re-creation of King’s final hours. The hotel rooms – 306 and 307 – where King and his aides stayed have been restored as closely as possible to their state on the night King was murdered.
A recently opened new exhibit called “Legacy” occupies the building across the street from the Lorraine – Bessie Brewer’s boardinghouse whence James Earl Ray (allegedly?) shot Dr. King. This exhibit reviews the Civil Rights timeline of the main building then traces the various conspiracy theories that have arisen since King’s assassination. You’re left to reach your own conclusion regarding the existence or non-existence of a conspiracy. I should note that the breadth and depth of the content in this museum could easily consume hours more time than I had to give it and would assuredly be worth revisiting on any subsequent trip.
Close observers of the photos in the album linked above may have spotted this photo:
Jacqueline Smith, a petite slender woman has held this protest vigil for over a quarter century. Now, the easy assumption is that an individual who has been protesting something as potentially meaningful as this museum or protesting anything, for that matter, for over 26 years might be a bit of a crackpot. However, I spoke with her at some length after finishing my tour and found her to be lucid, rational, and reasonable though we ultimately agreed to disagree about at least some of her reasons for protesting.
Her view, expressed on the poster above, is that the manner in which the exhibits are displayed tonally overemphasize violence thereby desecrating King’s non-violent vision. She’s also concerned that the neighborhood surrounding the Lorraine has gentrified and has now priced out low-income people who can no longer afford to live there. In her opinion, the museum has contributed to this gentrification and it isn’t making a significant contribution to the equality of life and opportunity that also constituted a part of King’s vision. She believes there are sufficient Civil Rights Museums and memorials throughout the country and that the resources expended on this one could be better spent on moving forward this last part of King’s vision in the city where he spent his last days.
For my part, as I watch the last survivors of the Holocaust die and hear the raised voices of the deniers, I hold the opinion that we can never have too many reminders of the violence of our past. We need reminders because even were we living in a utopian, color-blind world of equal economic opportunity for all people, hatred, violence, and suspicion seems to be part of our DNA and are feelings we must daily oppose within ourselves. Every reminder of our capacity for violence, every reminder of our inclination to distrust those who are different has value. Thus, we can never have too many of these museums.
Memphis is clearly a city of contrasts. Be it the ability to visit someplace as relatively trifling as Graceland in the morning followed by a visit to the Civil Rights Museum in the afternoon or the fact that looking at a demographic map makes this majority minority city still seem somewhat segregated, the contrasts are ever present.
In yet another contrast, I ended my day on Beale Street. Here are my impressions. The area is somewhat evocative of Bourbon Street in New Orleans though Beale Street struck me as shorter, louder, and without the clubs of exotic dancers and myriad people traipsing along the street with an alcoholic beverage in hand. I could point out other similarities (and differences) but I will leave those to you to discover.
I started my Beale Street experience with dinner at Miss Polly’s Soul City Cafe – home of love, peace and chicken grease. I went full on for the chicken and waffles dinner. I drank iced tea in lieu of beer and still felt I needed a wheelbarrow to get me back to the street.
The music along the street is loud and cacophonous. As is the case in the French Quarter, you don’t need to enter a bar to or club to hear live or recorded music. (The shows in some of the clubs start late so they pipe recorded music.) In too many instances it seemed the bands ascribed to the louder is better theory of live music and I felt my eardrums would survive the night better if I didn’t go inside. Also along Beale Street I spotted a branch of the bar Coyote Ugly which inspired a mediocre movie of the same name. And yes, the bartenders do dance on the bar. Further, apparently with Hollywood in mind, akin to that city’s star-studded sidewalk, Beale Street has its own Walk of Fame using brass musical notes rather than stars. The honorees don’t seem to be limited to musicians or music industry notables, however. I noticed one note honoring one time senator and governor Lamar Alexander.
Like Bourbon Street, there’s a similar heavy police presence on and around Beale Street. There’s also an abundance of panhandlers, conhandlers (people who think they need to hand you a wilted flower or engage in some meaningless conversation hoping they’ll induce you to turn over a dollar or two), and street performers from the flipping kids passing a hat to the robot man who wanted $3.00 for a photo.
Smartly, Memphis built its arena (the FedEx Center) a block from Beale Street. I’m sure the bars and clubs appreciate the business boost from the post-game crowds. I, however, seeing myself more and more metamorphose into a grumpy old man, heard no music that induced me into the clubs and by 21:00, was on my way back to my hotel to finish the day in my roles of planner and chronicler before assuming my ultimate daily role of sleeper.
One last note about my brief stay in Memphis. Sometimes karma does come back to you even in small ways. Throughout the day, I’d handed out several dollars to those panhandlers and conhandlers, and even given a dollar or two to help out Jacqueline Smith. I went into the hotel shop to buy a candy bar and when I went to the desk to pay for it, the clerk waved me off and said, “On me.” Thus did one small kind gesture balance another.