National Civil Rights Museum

The Lorraine Motel began in 1924 as a small hotel on Mulberry Street. Walter Bailey bought it in 1945 and named it for his wife, Loree, and the song "Sweet Lorraine." Under segregation it was a good place for Black travelers to sleep in Memphis, and its guests included Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Nat King Cole and Aretha Franklin. Stax musicians stayed here through the 1960s.

Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis in the spring of 1968 to back the city's sanitation workers. They had walked out in February after two Black men were crushed by a garbage compactor and the city refused to recognize their union, and they carried signs that read "I Am A Man." King gave his last speech at Mason Temple on April 3. On April 4 he was shot on the balcony outside Room 306 and died at St. Joseph's Hospital. He was 39.

A local foundation bought the failing motel at auction in 1982 for $144,000. The museum opened in 1991 and was rebuilt and expanded for its reopening in 2014. It keeps part of the original motel, including the room where King had been staying, and its exhibits follow the movement from the nineteenth century to the present. Across the street, Jacqueline Smith, a former motel housekeeper, has kept a vigil since the motel closed, protesting the displacement of its poor tenants. Give it a slow afternoon.