Day 32 - National Civil Rights Museum

We like Elvis but had no wish to visit Graceland. Instead we went to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated on 4 April 1968.

King was standing on the balcony outside room 306 where he regularly stayed when visiting Memphis. The white male sniper shot him from a bathroom window in a boarding house across the street. The motel continued to operate but by 1982 it went into foreclosure.

Money was raised to purchase the motel and develop the museum. Ten years ago the former boarding house was integrated into the museum. The strategy of turning the motel into a sacred place appears to have been very successful, and it has denied white supremacists a potential shrine.

The sniper escaped but was arrested in June trying to leave London Heathrow Airport on a forged Canadian passport carrying a loaded pistol. He pleaded guilty because a guilty verdict following a contested jury trial would have left him exposed to the death penalty. He was sentenced to 99 years, increased to 100 years after he briefly escaped from the penitentiary.

The extensive exhibition was well done but we were caught up in a large slow moving tour group. The guide was informative but talked too much and too fast. Her personal experience of overt segregation in the south was attending a Black only prom. Some high schools continue to avoid mixed race proms by parents and students organising private functions.

There was a special exhibition of works by Romane Beardon, an African American artist whose mother was a well known civil rights activist. He used different media but I preferred his screen prints.