Tom Lee

Lee was the only witness. On May 8, 1925, the sternwheeler M.E. Norman, carrying a party of civil engineers on a sightseeing trip, capsized in the Mississippi near Cow Island Bend. Lee, a riverworker who could not swim, ran his 28-foot motorboat Zev back and forth and kept searching through the night, pulling 32 passengers from the water. Twenty others swam to safety on their own. Twenty-three passengers and crew drowned, and three bodies were never found. Tom Lee Park on the Memphis riverfront is named for him, and a bronze sculpture there honors him.

What the plaque says

Tom Lee, 1885-1952 Born February 18, 1885, in Hopefield, Arkansas, Tom Lee became a Memphis hero through an extraordinary act of bravery when he rescued 32 people from drowning in the Mississippi River on May 8, 1925. The M. E. Norman steamboat had capsized with members of the Engineers' Club of Memphis aboard when Lee, an African American who did not know how to swim, risked his own life. In gratitude, the Club coordinated a national fundraiser to by him a home in Klondike, a neighborhood created for African American homeowners in Memphis. Continued. Tom Lee died on April 1, 1952, and was interred in Mt. Carmel Cemetery. Today, Tom Lee's home in the historic klondike neighborhood symbolizes the valiant efforts of many African American leaders in Memphis to serve their community with courage and compassion even in the most challenging circumstances.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sun Studio — 2.3 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.
• Beale Street — 2.8 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.
• Elmwood Cemetery — 2.9 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.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 3.3 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

• William Herbert Brewster, Sr. — 1.0 mi
• Isaac Hayes — 1.3 mi
• Manassas High School / The Cora P. Taylor Auditorium — 1.3 mi
• Humes High School Alma Mater of Elvis Presley — 1.3 mi