Memphis Martyrs

The 1878 epidemic fell differently on the people who stayed. About 17,000 Memphians caught yellow fever between August and mid-October, and 5,150 died. Over 90 percent of white residents who stayed were infected and roughly 70 percent of them died. Black residents were infected in large numbers too, but only 7 percent of infected Black Memphians died, a gap experts still cannot fully explain. The city went broke and the state revoked its charter in 1879. Black leaders used their numbers during the crisis to place the first Black patrolmen on the police force, where they stayed until 1895.

What the plaque says

Memphis Martyrs In August, 1878, fear of death caused a panic during which 30,000 of 50,000 Memphians fled this bluff city. By October, the epidemic of yellow fever killed 4,204 of 6,000 Caucasians and 946 of 14,000 Negros who stayed. With some outside help, citizens of all races and walks of life, recognizing their common plight in this devastated, bankrupt community, tended 17,600 sick and buried the dead. As a result many of them lost their lives, becoming martyrs in their service to mankind.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 0.8 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 — 0.8 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.
• Beale Street — 1.3 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 — 2.0 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

• Fort Pickering — 0.3 mi
• WLOK Radio Station — 0.9 mi
• John James Audubon — 1.0 mi
• Bishop Charles Harrison Mason — 1.3 mi