National Museum of African American Music

The idea began in 1998, when Francis Guess and Dr. T. B. Boyd imagined a museum for Black music and first planned it for Jefferson Street, the old center of Black nightlife and the street of Fisk University and Tennessee State University. The 2008 recession stalled the fundraising, and the project was rebuilt downtown, on the site of the former convention center in the Broadway Historic District. Ground was broken in April 2017, the museum opened to the public on January 30, 2021, and it was dedicated on Juneteenth that year.

Visitors start in the Roots Theater with an introductory film, then walk a corridor called Rivers of Rhythm that links the five themed galleries. Touch tables there run a timeline from 1619 to 2016 in thirteen eras, pairing historic events with the music made in them. The museum covers gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop, with each gallery taking a different narrative.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers, whose 1870s tours paid for Fisk's first permanent building, have a traveling exhibition of their own, shown here and across the country. The Ryman, where the Singers performed in 1913, is a short walk up Rep. John Lewis Way, formerly Fifth Avenue, and the lunch counters of the 1960 sit-ins were on the same street.