Archbishop James P. Lyke

Lyke grew up poor on Chicago's South Side, the youngest of seven children, and a Baptist mother, Ora, washed laundry at St. George Church to pay his Catholic school tuition. He joined the Franciscans in 1959. After King's assassination in Memphis he asked to be sent to a Tennessee parish, and later, as auxiliary bishop of Cleveland, he coordinated the group that produced Lead Me, Guide Me, the African American Catholic hymnal, in 1987. Atlanta made him archbishop in 1991.

What the plaque says

Archbishop James P. Lyke Born on February 18 in Chicago, Illinois, Father James P. Lyke, OFM, Ph. D. was the first African-American Catholic priest to serve in Tennessee. Two years after his June 24, 1966 ordination, he was assigned to St. Thomas (St. Augustine) Church where he served until 1977. On August 1, 1979, when ordained Auxiliary Bishop of Clevland, Ohio, he became the fifth American-American and youngest Bishop in the nation. In 1991, Pope John Paul II named him Archbishop of Atlanta. Until his death on December 27, 1992, Archbishop James P. Lyke was the highest ranking African-American prelate in the U. S.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 0.7 mi
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Elmwood Cemetery — 1.1 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 1.6 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 1.7 mi
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.

More markers nearby

• Willie Mitchell's Royal Studios — steps away
• Centenary United Methodist Church — 0.3 mi
• Forrest's Artillery Positions -Aug. 21, 1964- — 0.4 mi
• Dr. Joseph Edison Walker — 0.4 mi