Dr. Joseph Edison Walker

Walker's bank mattered beyond banking. Tri-State opened in 1946 with Walker and his son A. Maceo Walker at Beale Street and Fourth Avenue, where Robert Church's Solvent Savings Bank had stood, and began with assets of only $240,000. According to Jesse Turner Jr., many local sit-ins were planned in its boardroom, and officers kept the vault open at night to supply bail money for protesters. Jesse H. Turner Sr., hired in 1949 to bring the books under control, rose to become president and was one of the first Black officeholders in Memphis and Shelby County since Reconstruction.

What the plaque says

Dr. Joseph Edison Walker 1880-1958 In 1923, Dr. J.E. Walker co-founded and was the first president of Universal Life Insurance Company, established in Memphis. A physician by training, he helped organize the old Memphis Negro Chamber of Commerce in 1926. Walker served as president of the National Negro Business League, founded by Booker T. Washington, and the National Insurance Association. A founder and first president of the Memphis Urban League, he co-founded and was the first president of Tri-State Bank in 1946. Dr. Walker received national recognition from Jet and Ebony magazines and from President Truman.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 0.4 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 — 0.7 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.
• Sun Studio — 1.6 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.
• 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.

More markers nearby

• The 1960 Memphis Sit-In Movement — steps away
• People's Grocery — steps away
• Hollis Freeman Price, Sr. — 0.2 mi
• LeMoyne-Owen College — 0.3 mi