This day, October 21, was devoted to another side of Memphis’s role in America history. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on the balcony of his room in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Dr King’s influence in the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s was so enormous that the motel later became the centerpiece of the National Civil Rights Museum. Other sites important to the assassination, including the building across the street where James Earl Ray fired the shot that killed King, are also part of the museum complex.

This museum tells the story of the battle for racial equality in the first half of the 20th century in America. Having grown up during some of this this time, I remember many of the events portrayed in the museum as current events of my childhood and teenage years. There are many excerpts from newspapers and radio and television news broadcasts that bring these events to life. There are also recreated artifacts and scenes that allow you to walk into some of these events as if you were a participant. We spent 5 hours going through the Lorraine Motel section and were so overwhelmed by it that we didn’t get to the rest of it. It’s a place that really gets under your skin.

The museum opens with an exhibit on the Rosenwald Schools. During the early 20th century, Booker T Washington and Julius Rosenwald, the head of Sears and Roebuck, collaborated on a project to provide a good education to black children. They worked with communities in the original 11 confederate states, plus Oklahoma, Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, to assist in the construction and staffing of school buildings for black students. The communities had to invest in the projects with financing, labor, and in many cases donations of land. The local white school boards also had to agree to fund the schools after they were built. Over a period of about 20 years, over 5,000 (!) schools and teacher homes were built. This huge investment in education gave the black population a foundation on which to build greater expectations for the future. The museum acknowledges the Rosenwald Schools as a spark that helped to ignite the civil rights movement in the generation that began their education in them.

I have no photos from the Rosenwald Schools exhibit, as they were not permitted. I think that the rest of the museum’s experience is best told in pictures. These are highlights of the breadth and depth of the information presented.