Church Park

Memphis had no public parks for Black residents in 1899, so Robert Church Sr. bought a tract on Beale Street, landscaped it and built an auditorium seating two thousand. It was reportedly the only venture of its kind in the country owned and run by a person of color for his own community. W. C. Handy led the orchestra. In 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt spoke to ten thousand people gathered in the hall and on the grounds, a sign of Church's weight in Republican politics, which had sent him to the 1900 national convention.

What the plaque says

Church Park At this location Church Park and Auditorium was established in 1899 by Robert R. Church Sr., a Memphis business man and former slave, to provide recreational facilities for members of his race who had no other place to meet. Many famous Americans, including Booker T. Washington and Theodore Roosevelt spoke here. After the death of its founder, who had become the first Negro millionaire in the South, the park and auditorium was managed by his son, Robert Church, Jr., who, at this site organized the Lincoln League and the Memphis Chapter N.A.A.C.P., the first chapter in Tennessee.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Beale Street — 0.2 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• Sun Studio — 0.6 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 0.6 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.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 0.7 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.

More markers nearby

• Sara Roberta Church 1914-1995 — steps away
• Mary Church Terrell — steps away
• Nat D. Williams — steps away
• Rufus Thomas, Jr. — steps away