Deep South - Fall 2011 - Day 7 - Memphis

The following day we were based in Memphis and had two of the most popular visits to do, even at this point without benefit of hindsight, we were keener on one than the other. We SatNaved out of the hotel to Graceland. The hotel breakfast was not complimentary so we set off without eating and right after paying $10 to park in the Graceland car park we walked next door to a great diner. Julia had a “short stack” of pancakes and I had bacon and fried eggs “over easy”. Great food and great value. Annoyingly another customer was also going to visit Graceland and the staff were quite happy fort him to leave his car on their parking lot while he did so!
While we were eating a party of four arrived, both men heavily tattooed with Aryan symbols and they ordered big breakfasts – I hope the black lady cooking their meals either didn’t see their ink or exercised some restraint in what she added to their food.
Heading back next door into the ticket sales we opted for Platinum tours at $35 each, this gave us self guided tours of the house and grounds, his car collection, his private planes and other bits and pieces. We then stood in line for the shuttle bus; we managed to be immediately followed by a mother, daughter and two rowdy sons. We were issued with our tour headsets. Two shuttles came and went and the third took us and the annoying boys over the road into the grounds. Julia and I are not great Elvis fans so it is fair to say that the “must see” attraction of Graceland left us a bit cool. We entered the house and were led by the commentary round the ground floor and basement. Inside the house we could use non-flash photography and outside we were free to take unlimited pictures. The furnishings were clearly cutting edge for their time, expensive but on the flashy side. The lounge was the most normal room with a white three piece suit and coffee table but next to it was a music room with a grand piano. Mirrors were not in short supply wherever you looked. We, like many of Elvis’ actual guests, were not allowed upstairs. The dinning room was set out with the best service and looked like a plantation home rather than of its real period. We passed a kitchen but apart from it looking like one we updated at home there was nothing notable about it. From his Jungle room, furnished with African artifacts and fitted carpet on the floor and ceiling, we went downstairs to his TV room, where based on something he had read about a president, he watched three sets simultaneously, Next came the pool room, one of the endearing things I noted was that as a group Elvis and his associates were always playing or competing with each other.
After the house the tour seemed to me to be more about the records and films rather than the man but there were two or three interesting glimpses, in the garage block there was an improvised shooting gallery complete with a man shaped target pinned to some sizable chunks of wood, railway sleepers? Typical of the cult status of Elvis his discarded brass, cartridge cases, were displayed with reverence. He had also enjoyed playing Racquetball so in 1975 he built a court in the grounds of the house; it was state of the art including a weight training area, jacuzzi, the full size court with a viewing gallery and luxury sitting area. Sadly, from my point of view, only the seating area survived, the court area was now another gallery of his record successes.
Leaving this area we arrived at the Meditation Garden. Elvis who died at the estate on August 16, 1977, his parents Gladys and Vernon Presley, and his grandmother, are buried there. A memorial gravestone for Presley's twin brother, Jesse Garon, who died at birth, is also at the site. We didn’t linger here and we soon rejoined the shuttle bus which returned us to the other side of the road,
We checked out the collection of Elvis’ cars without a great deal of enthusiasm but it was much more interesting to get aboard his private planes. It brings home the real wealth of someone who owns a jet airliner and a smaller plane for more intimate journeys.
By now we had overdosed on Elvis and set off to find the National Museum of Civil Rights placed with a deft touch at the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated.
The SatNav again took us accurately to the area but there was something going on and the parking lot was closed and several streets blocked off. We worried for a bit that the museum was also closed but we were able to park a few blocks away and walk back.
Approaching the Lorraine Motel you could easily fool yourself into thinking it is open for business but entering takes you into the most thought provoking series of displays which I defy anyone to pass through without shedding a tear.
Before dealing with our museum experience here is a piece of research about the motel/museum’s history.
The first hotel on the site was the 16 room Windsor Hotel built on the northern side of the complex around 1925 which was renamed the Marquette Hotel. Walter Bailey purchased it in 1945 and renamed it for his wife Loree and the song Sweet Lorraine. During segregation it was an upscale accommodation that catered to a black clientele. He added a second floor and then drive up access for more rooms on the south side of the complex converting the name from Lorraine Hotel to Lorraine Motel. Its guests included musicians going to Stax Records including Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton, Aretha Franklin, Ethel Waters, Otis Redding, The Staple Singers and Wilson Pickett.
Following the assassination of King, Bailey left Room 306 outside of which King was assassinated and the adjoining room 307 unoccupied as a memorial to King. Bailey's wife Loree, who suffered a stroke hours after the assassination, died five days later. He converted the other motel rooms to single room occupancy.
Bailey worked with Chuck Scruggs, program director of WDIA and attorney D'Army Bailey, to raise funds to "Save the Lorraine" in the newly formed Martin Luther King Memorial Foundation and bought the motel on the Shelby County Courthouse steps for $144,000 following foreclosure in December 1982. It changed its name to Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation in 1984. The Lorraine closed as a motel on March 2, 1988 when sheriff's deputies forcibly evicted the last holdout tenant, Jacqueline Smith, in preparation for an $8.8 million overhaul. Bailey died in July 1988. Smithsonian Institution curator Benjamin Lawless created a design for saving historical aspects. The Nashville, Tennessee firm McKissack and McKissack, which claims to be the oldest minority owned architect firm in the United States, was tapped to design a modern museum on grounds of the motel that were not directly related to the assassination.
The museum was dedicated on July 4, 1991 and officially opened to the public on Sept. 28, 1991.
In 1999 the Foundation acquired the Young and Morrow Building and its associated vacant lot on a hill on the west side of Mulberry. A tunnel was built under the lot connecting it with the motel. The Foundation became the custodian of the police and evidence files associated with the assassination including the rifle and fatal bullet which are on display in a 12,800 sq. foot exhibit in the building which opened Sept. 28, 2002.
Once inside the museum we were made really welcome, the staff seemed to care deeply that we should get the best out of the experience and the free commentary headset was brilliant although if you only followed its instructions you would be a little rushed through the displays. The connecting route through the building was brilliantly designed and the experiences differed from hands-on to video. There is far too much to list and the rule against photography inside means that I have no easy reminders of the exhibits but perhaps that makes one concentrate on what you are experiencing. I saw with horror photos of black men being lynched in front of large crowds. I sat on a bus next to Rosa Parkes as she was ordered to go to the back, the irony being if I had got on that bus she would normally have given up her seat to me. I saw a Woolworth’s food counter being peacefully occupied by black students, trained how to take a beating without fighting back. I passed a burnt out Greyhound bus used by the freedom riders. I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. I saw Martin Luther King’s cell in Birmingham Jail. I experienced the triumph of the March on Washington and with some foreboding I heard MLK’s words: Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.From there you arrive at his motel room, left untouched because even then people recognised the history in that moment, and looking out you see the wreath on the balcony – it is a very powerful moment.
In our case we realised that the museum was half an hour from closing and we went downstairs, the staff urged us to go across the road to the Young and Morrow Building at 422 Main Street on the west side of Mulberry up a small hill across the street from the motel which was the site where James Earl Ray initially confessed (and later recanted) to shooting King from a second story bathroom window as well as the Canipe’s Amusement Store at 418 Main Street next door to the rooming house where the alleged murder weapon with Ray's fingerprints was found. Included on the grounds is the brushy lot that stood between the rooming house and the motel where a differing theory says the fatal shot came from a different weapon at ground level in a conspiracy involving Loyd Jowers who operated Jim's Grill which opened onto the lot.
Here we had little enough time to take in all the exhibits but we saw the bathroom window from which James Earl Ray probably fired and, in another claim to fame, we saw the actual assassination weapon, the only one ever released by the FBI after any of the famous assassinations.
As the museum closed we left with very deep thoughts, the deepest of which is, and always will be, would I have had the courage to stand up and be counted?
The area was crowded because of the River Arts Fest and, despite our sombre mood, it was a vibrant and tuneful wander as we took a roundabout route to the parked car.
Back at the hotel we decided to walk to the TGIF restaurant we had seen from the shuttle the previous night, we set off and needed to return to the hotel after five or so blocks because neither of us had picked up any money. We made it on the second attempt and we had a great meal at a very reasonable price before getting a relatively early night in anticipation of another 200 mile plus journey to Jackson the next day.