About a block away, at 450 Mulberry St, stood the low-slung Lorraine Motel. The phrase "it had seen better days" was somehow both appropriate and inappropriate. We knew that was the place where the Rev. Martin Luther King had been assassinated.
That balcony. Everyone knew.
We would slow-roll past it and sometimes pause, to stare at that place, that balcony, and imagine the horror.
In 1991, a few years after I moved away, the Lorraine Motel transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum.
If you ever travel to Memphis, make sure to prioritize a visit to this museum. I experienced more emotion in that museum than any other. And I have visited museums throughout the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia, so that's saying something.
Some of the exhibits haunt me to this day. The dark, dog-house-sized replica of the space where a slave sat chained, unable to straighten their body, for months at sea. With the audio. Of the clanking chains and the screams of pain and suffering.
MLK's motel room, preserved in time, just as it was on that day.
The National Civil Rights Museum does it right. It fills you with horror, as it should. For me, that building always did.
#MLK #MartinLutherKing #BLM #Racism #Bigotry #CivilRights #USPol #USPolitics
