Welcome to the Park of the Week Newsletter for February 1, 2024. In honor of Black History Month, this week’s park is a museum built around the assassination site of one of the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest leaders.
National Civil Rights Museum
Location
Memphis, Tennessee, United States
Claim to fame
On the evening of April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King–the voice of the Civil Rights Movement that changed a nation–was declared dead an hour later at a local hospital.
In 1991 the Lorraine Motel was established as the National Civil Rights Museum. An affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum is built within the historic hotel. It tells the story of over 400 years of African American history, with particular focus on the struggle for Civil Rights that culminated in the dismantling of institutionalized segregation but also in the murders of King and other leaders and activists.
Reason to visit
Both a museum and a historic site, the interior of the Lorraine Motel is today a modern museum, complete with a vast collection of historical artifacts and exhibits. The museum features replicas of the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and the freedom rider bus set aflame by Klansmen. The museum also displays the gun and bullet that ended King’s life.
The exterior of the Lorraine Motel looks just as it did the fateful night when King was assassinated. Visitors can peer up at the balcony forever memorialized by famous and tragic photos taken moments before and after the shooting, as well as get a glimpse of the room where King spent his last hours, preserved as it was that evening.
Wild Fact
Even prior to King’s assassination, the Lorraine Motel was well known as one of the few safe resting spots for Black travelers in the South. Before the end of racial segregation, many hotels and motels would not admit Black guests. The Lorraine Motel catered to upscale Black clientele, like famous musicians visiting or recording in Memphis, including Ray Charles, B.B. King, Nat King Cole, and Aretha Franklin.
Originally the Windsor Hotel, Walter Bailey purchased it and renamed it Lorraine, a take on his wife’s name Loree. Upon hearing of King’s assassination in her hotel, Loree Bailey suffered a stroke and died five days later.
The hotel is today a part of the African American Civil Rights Network, overseen by the US National Park Service.
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