John James Audubon

Audubon came down the Mississippi in 1820 nearly broke. His Henderson, Kentucky, business had collapsed in 1819 and he had been jailed for debt. He took Joseph Mason along to paint the plant backgrounds of his bird studies. In Henderson he had bought land and enslaved people, and he sold the enslaved people when the family needed money, a record abolitionists criticized in both the United States and Britain. Birds of America, published from 1827 to 1838, ran to 435 hand-colored, life-size prints.

What the plaque says

John James Audubon On Dec. 1, 1820, this naturalist and artist landed nearby, on his way by flatboat from Cincinnati to New Orleans. He kept a diary and sketched animals and birds seen en route. Near here, he saw gulls, cormorants, "white-headed eagles," grackles, purple finches, teal, parakeets, sandhill cranes and numerous types of geese. These sketches helped form the basis for parts of his monumental book of engravings, Birds in America, published 1826-38.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Civil Rights Museum — 0.4 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 — 0.5 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.
• Beale Street — 0.5 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 — 1.3 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.

More markers nearby

• Gayoso House — 0.3 mi
• WLOK Radio Station — 0.4 mi
• Hooks Brothers Photography Established in 1907 — 0.4 mi
• WDIA: The Goodwill Station — 0.5 mi