Diana Petterson North American Continent, Tennessee, U.S. Travels

Memphis: Civil Rights, the blues, Elvis & Victorian homes

This iconic photo was taken April 3, 1968, on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Right Museum in Memphis, just outside of Room 306 where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was staying and where the next day at 6:01 p.m. on April 4 Dr. King would be assassinated and his profound voice and peaceful attack on racism would be silenced...but not forever. The original photo was taken by Joseph Louw /The Life Images Collection/Getty Images/CNN (Sept. 12, 2020)

Memphis, Tennessee’s second-most populous city may well be known for its historic blues clubs on Beale Street or Graceland, the mansion of American singer and actor Elvis Presley (1935-1977) referred to as the “King of Rock and Roll,” or the place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lost his life to an assassin’s bullet in 1968 while on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel. 

Since I chose to upgrade my hotel stay for my quick two nights in Memphis, staying at the elegant Peabody Hotel on Main Street allowed me to park my car and walk to the places I wanted to see. And, for me, the main place on my list, even though Beale Street was just a block or so away, was the former Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum. 

During this time of Coronavirus when a number of museums during my travels were closed and so many businesses as well, I was grateful the National Civil Rights Museum was open. I purchased my timed ticket online and got to the museum early. And, as has been the case, not many people were present so I was able to visit the museum even before my allotted time. And, of course practiced social distancing and wore a mask. 

The Museum, considered to be the very first Civil Rights Museum, is housed at the renovated Lorraine Motel. It traces the history of African Americans from the 1600s beginnings of slavery through the Civil Rights Movement. That includes public school desegregation, Jim Crow segregation laws, peaceful lunch counter protests, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Riders, the killings of Emmitt Till and Medgar Evers, voting rights, the Bloody Sunday walk from Selma to Montgomery, Black Power and ultimately, Dr. King’s last days at the Lorraine Motel. 

Check out my quick stay in Memphis. 

The former Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, is where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed on April 4, 1968, a day after delivering his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. Following his death, Walter Bailey, who owned the hotel at the time, withdrew Room 306, where Dr. King was killed on the balcony, and the adjoining room 307 from use, maintaining them as a memorial to the activist leader. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Entering a circular gallery, at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, begins with a graphic and stirring exhibit of the Middle Passage, the journey from Africa to the Americans and the impact of slavery in America from 1619-1861. “The Transatlantic Slave Trade lasted 366 years and moved 12.5 million Africans across the Atlantic Ocean. It was the largest forced migration in human history,” states historical information from the National Civil Rights Museum. “The journey from Africa to the Americas was known as the Middle Passage. It was the second leg of the three-part trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas. This journey began far inland, where Africans were kidnapped from their homes. Up to a third died during the march to the coastal European slave forts. To prevent rebellion, captives were separated from those they knew. Then they were inspected, branded with hot irons by trading companies and taken by canoe to waiting slave ships. (Sept. 12, 2020)
A statue of an enslaved woman, with infant child cradled in her arms, being sold her master or auctioneer is part of the initial circular gallery exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum (formerly the Lorraine Motel) in Memphis. “Slavery was big business. By the time of the Civil War, America had nearly $4 million in 1860 sales, about $3 billion in today’s dollars. Investment in ‘human property’ exceeded investment in all of America’s banks, factories and railroads combined,” states historical information from the National Civil Rights Museum. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The story of Elizabeth Freeman from New England, who was born into slavery in 1742 and sued for her freedom in 1781. An all-white jury found in her favor. Her story is one of a number of stories at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis about enslaved Africans not accepting their fate. “Some resisted in subtle ways, through quiet acts of defiance or by holding on their customs and traditions. Others made bold bids for freedom and ‘stole themselves’ by running away. Still others used guns and weapons against slave holders. Free blacks also fought back by arguing against slavery in pulpits and newspapers and helped fugitive slaves reach safety.” (Sept. 12, 2020)
The an exhibit, at the National Civil Right Museum in Memphis, of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case heard in 1954 in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional. The case originated in 1951 when the public school district in Topeka, Kansas, refused to enroll the daughter of local black resident Oliver Brown at the school closest to their home, instead requiring her to ride a bus to a segregated black elementary school farther away. The Browns and 12 other local black families in similar situations filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. federal court against the Topeka Board of Education alleging its segregation policy was unconstitutional. (Sept. 12, 2020)
A Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) lithograph entitled “The Problem We All Live With,” at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Rockwell’s first assignment for Look magazine was an illustration of a six-year-old African-American school girl being escorted by four U.S. marshals to her first day at an all-white school in New Orleans. Ordered to proceed with school desegregation after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Louisiana lagged behind until pressure from Federal Judge Skelly Wright forced the school board to begin desegregation on November 14, 1960. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Thousands of Americans learned of the murder of 14-year-old Emmet Till when snapshots of his funeral appeared in the Sept. 22, 1955 issue of JET magazine, a popular African American weekly. It made the horror of white supremacy all too real. And, why was this young boy beaten, mutilated and thrown in a river? He was accused of offending a white woman in her family’s grocery store by supposedly flirting or whistling at her. Young Emmet Till’s mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket so the world could see his mutilated body.
(Sept. 12, 2020)
A replica of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, from 1955 to 1956 began when 42-year-old Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. The movement, where African Americans stayed off the buses for more than a year, came with a Supreme Court ruling that forced Montgomery officials to end segregation on city buses. The victory paved the way for mass civil rights mobilizations across the nation. (Sept. 12, 2020)
A replica of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, from 1955 to 1956 began when 42-year-old Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Inside a bus replica of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, from 1955 to 1956 began when 42-year-old Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. That’s Mrs. Parks taking her seat and refusing to move. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Inside a bus replica of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, from 1955 to 1956 began when 42-year-old Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. That’s Mrs. Parks taking her seat and refusing to move. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Exhibits inside the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. (Sept. 12, 2020)
“We want the world to know that we no longer accept the inferior position of second-class citizenship. We are willing to go to jail, be ridiculed, spat upon and even suffer physical violence to obtain first-class citizenship,” a quote from Ella Baker, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) advisor, from 1960. That quote is at this original lunch counter at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis where protestors sat with hecklers hovering over them. (Sept. 12, 2020)
A replica of the Greyhound Bus destroyed by white supremacists during the Freedom Rides at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.
On Mother’s Day, May 14, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders traveling by bus from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans were met by a white mob in Anniston, Alabama. The mob attacked the bus with baseball bats and iron pipes. They also slashed the tires. When the hobbled bus pulled over, the mob pulled riders off the bus and beat them with pipes. Then they set the bus on fire. The photograph of the Greyhound bus engulfed in flames, the black smoke filling the sky became an unforgettable image of the civil rights movement. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The mugshots of Freedom Riders at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. The riders in question were participants in the 1961 summer demonstration organized by CORE, the Congress for Racial Equality. The interracial activists, clergy and college students were recruited to integrate bus and train stations throughout the South.
As riders poured into the South, National Guardsmen were assigned to some buses to prevent violence. When activists arrived at the Jackson, Mississippi, bus depot, police arrested blacks who refused to heed orders to stay out of white restrooms or vacate the white waiting room. And whites were arrested if they used “colored” facilities. Officials charged the riders with breach of peace, rather than breaking segregation laws. Freedom Riders responded with a strategy they called “jail, no bail”—a deliberate effort to clog the penal facilities. Most of the 300 riders in Jackson would endure six weeks in sweltering jail or prison cells rife with mice, insects, soiled mattresses and open toilets. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The LIFE magazine cover, of Myrlie Evers, a widow consoling her young son Darrell Kenyatta Evers at the funeral of their husband and father, American civil rights activist Medgar Evers (1925-1963) at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Evers was assassinated by a member of the White Citizens’ Council in Jackson, Mississippi. This group was formed in 1954 in Mississippi to resist the integration of schools and civil rights activism.
Evers, a World War II veteran, worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, end the segregation of public facilities, and expand opportunities for African Americans, which included the enforcement of voting rights. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis where some 200,000 to 500,000 demonstrators marched down Constitution Avenue progressing to the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963 advocating for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his eloquent and riveting “I Have a Dream,” at the Lincoln Memorial.
The march is credited for helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It preceded the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights Movement, which contributed to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (Sept. 12, 2020)
To register to vote meant risking the safety of your family, your job, your congregation and even your life. “In Selma, Alabama, as in so many places throughout the South, whites used a combination of Jim Crow laws and acts of terror to keep blacks from even registering to vote. Yet whites failed to extinguish the burning desire of African Americans to exercise the most fundamental right in a democracy: the right to vote,” from the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. (Sept. 12, 2020)
By 1965, as this exhibit shows at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Selma, Alabama, was the frontline in the fight for voting rights. Then, as visitors cross the Edmond Pettus Bridge, they walk into a monumental-sized screen of film on the Bloody Sunday attack on peaceful protestors. From there, visitors successfully march from Selma to Montgomery, culminating with Dr. King’s delivery of the “How Long, Not Long” speech from steps of the Alabama state capitol. (Sept. 12, 2020)
“There was something about the fury in the eyes of the troopers,” said Reverend Hosea Williams, a leader of the Selma to Montgomery March. “You sensed that they had been souped up for this moment, that in the power of the billy stick they inflicted pent up frustrations and fear.”
On March 7, 1965, when then-25-year-old activist John Lewis led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, they faced the brutal gasping and billy club attacks of the oncoming state troopers. Footage of the violence collectively shocked the nation and galvanized the fight against racial injustice. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The Memphis sanitation workers strike exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis was in response to black sanitation workers being exposed to dangerous working conditions. On March 18, Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis to praise a crowd of 25,000 labor and civil right activists for their unity and encouraged the group to continue to support the sanitation strike by enacting a citywide work stoppage.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis on March 28, 1968 to lead a march through downtown as part of the sanitation workers strike. More than 6,000 people joined him to support the sanitation workers who wore the “I AM A Man” signs for the first time. The strike ended on April 16, 1968, with a settlement that included union recognition and wage increases, although additional strikes had to be threatened to force the City of Memphis to honor its agreements. The period was a turning point for black activism and union activity in Memphis. (Sept. 12, 2020)
This iconic photo was taken April 3, 1968, on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Right Museum in Memphis, just outside of Room 306 where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was staying and where the next day at 6:01 p.m. on April 4 Dr. King would be assassinated and his profound voice and peaceful attack on racism would be silenced…but not forever. The photo, from left includes Hosea Williams, Jesse Jackson, Dr. King, and Ralph Abernathy, was taken by Associated Press photographer Charles Kelly.
It was on April 3 that Dr. King had delivered his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis, concerning the Memphis Sanitation Strike while also calling for unity, economic actions, boycotts, and nonviolent protest. (Sept. 12, 2020)
A look onto the second floor balcony outside Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Dr. King, who had a very average day was assassinated outside the room on April 4, 1968. In 1982, a local nonprofit group saved the site from foreclosure for use as America’s first Civil Rights Museum. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Room 306 of the former Lorraine Hotel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stayed and where on the second floor balcony, he was assassinated on April 4, 1968. In 1982, a local nonprofit group saved the site from foreclosurer for use as America’s first Civil Rights Museum. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The Lorraine Hotel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis was originally the Windsor Hotel (c. 1925) and later one of only a few hotels for black entertainers such as Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Count Basie, B.B. King and Nat King Cole. Walter and Loree Bailey bought the hotel in 1942, renaming it Lorraine. The two vintage cars, parked in front of the large white and red wreath hanging outside the second floor balcony of room 306, represent the vehicles parked at the Lorraine Motel when Dr. King was killed. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The exterior of the Lorraine Hotel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assasinated on the second floor balcony outside his room of 306 on April 4, 1968. The vintage cars in the parking lot represent the vehicles parked at the Lorraine Motel when Dr. King was killed. The wreath on the balcony is a replica-the original was placed here on April 8, 1968 during a memorial service. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The “Upstanders” mural, which faces the Lorraine Motel in the South Main Arts District in Memphis. The mural, by the Facing History and Ourselves, a nonprofit educational and professional development organization, which collaborated with the UrbanArt Commission, National Civil Rights. The mural was created by artists Nelson Gutierrez, a Bogota, Colombia native who now works out of Memphis, and Cedar Nordbye, an associate professor at the University of Memphis and founder of the Memphis Mural Brigade. (Sept. 12, 2020)

I did not do any extensive exploring of Beale Street in Memphis other than walking down the street. And, as you can see from the photos, there just were not many people on Beale Street, but then and again, this was during the day and most of the action and activities takes place during the evening. 

Beale Street, established in 1841 has a history of attracting musicians and artists to its saloons and brothels became a thriving area for black commerce and culture. In the 1860s, many black traveling musicians began performing on Beale. But by the 1870’s, the population of Memphis was rocked by a series of yellow fever epidemics, a disease spread by mosquitos, sickened and killed people leading the city to forfeit its charter in 1879. During this time, Robert Church purchased land around Beale Street that would eventually lead to his becoming the first black millionaire from the south. 

Celebrated for its nightlife, Beale Street by day was a thriving center for Black business and cultural advancement. Blacks founded banks, insurance companies and newspapers. There were Black-owned barber shops, beauty parlors, custom trailer, drug stores and funeral homes. And in offices above many of these business doctors, dentists, lawyers and other professionals practiced. 

Today, Beale Street, a major tourist attraction, consists of three blocks of some historical buildings, nightclubs, restaurants and shops in the heart of downtown Memphis. The Beale Street Entertainment District is a melting pot of delta blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B and gospel.

Although I did not make it to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s (1935-1977) presence in Memphis and the impact Beale Street had on his music, is unmistakeable. Presley may have been born in Tupelo, Mississippi, but Memphis was home from the time he was a 13-year-old.  

If I had more time and in all honesty more interest in staying in Memphis, I probably would have loved seeing the interiors of the various Victorian homes in the Victorian Village along Adams Avenue on the edge of downtown Memphis called “Millionaires Row,” but it was time to move on to St. Louis, Missouri.  

Here’s to the remainder of my time in Memphis, Tennessee, with Beale Street, Elvis Presley and the Victorian Village.

My selfie at a mural on Beale Street in Memphis. (Sept. 13, 2020)
Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, has had a long stories history of attracting musicians and artists to its saloons and brothels since its inception in 1841. Today, Beale Street, a major tourist attraction, consists of three blocks of some historical buildings, nightclubs, restaurants and shops in the heart of downtown Memphis. (Sept. 13, 2020)
Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. (Sept. 13, 2020)
Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. (Sept. 13, 2020)
The Orpheum Theater, at the intersection of South Main and Beale Streets in downtown Memphis, opened its 2,308-seat venue in 1928 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The Daisy Theater, built in 1912, on Beale Street in Memphis is a surviving example of nickelodeon architecture from the early cinema era. (Sept. 13, 2020)
Although I did not make it to Graceland, Elvis Aaron Presley’s (1935-1977) presence in Memphis and the impact Beale Street had on his music, is unmistakeable. Presley may have been born in Tupelo, Mississippi, but Memphis was home from the time he was a 13-year-old. He would walk to Beale Street and gain inspiration from blues artists. The Elvis Presley Plaza, on the South side of Beale Street, near corner of South Main Street. The small city park is home to a large bronze statue of a young Elvis playing his guitar. The statue is by Andrea Lugar. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The large bronze statue of a young Elvis playing his guitar can be seen at the Elvis Presley Plaza on the South side of Beale Street near the corner of South Main Street in Memphis. The statue is by Andrea Lugar. (Sept. 12, 2020)
William Christopher Handy, also known as W.C. Handy (1873-1958) was one of the most influential American blues songwriters and referred to himself as the “Father Of The Blues.” This sign is on the gate outside of Handy’s home on Beale Street, a center of African-American music, in Memphis. Handy did not create the blues genre but was the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a regional Delta blues music style, with a limited audience, to a new level of popularity. Handy was the composer and lyricist of the song “Beale Street Blues,” published in 1917. (Sept. 13, 2020)
The home of the influential American blues composer W.C. Handy on Beale Street in Memphis. (Sept. 13, 2020)
A historical marker on Beale Street in Memphis identifying the contributions of Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) for her crusade against lynchings in Memphis and the South. In 1892, as the editor of the Memphis Free Speech, Wells wrote of the lynching of three Black businessmen. As a result, her newspaper office, which was located on Beale Street, was destroyed and her life threatened. (Sept. 13, 2020)
The Beale Street Baptist Church was built by a congregation of freed slaves and known as the First Baptist Church or Beale Avenue Baptist Church in Memphis. It was designed by the prominent Memphis architectural firm of Jones & Baldwin, a partnership between Edward Culliatt Jones and Matthias Baldwin. Its foundation stone was laid in 1869, and it was constructed between 1871 and 1885. In the late 1880s, the church also housed the newspaper office of Ida B. Wells, the famous civil rights journalist. Over the years, President Ulysses S. Grant spoke here in 1880, Teddy Roosevelt and A. Philip Randolph in 1944. (Sept. 13, 2020)
The Robert Church Park, just steps from the Beale Street Baptist Church on Beale Street in Memphis, is in honor of Robert Reed Church (1839-1912) who was born into slavery yet became the South’s first African American millionaire.
Church was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the son of Charles B. Church, a wealthy white owner of two luxury steamboats, and Emmaline, one of the man’s slaves who worked as a seamstress on the plantation. In later years, Robert Church maintained that neither he nor his mother had ever been treated as a slaves even though that was their legal status. His father may have treated him with affection, but he never formally recognized the relationship and nor did he educate his son, but he trained him in the steamboat business.  (Sept. 13, 2020)
This 80-foot-tall mural on the side of a parking garage in downtown Memphis features a visual timeline of the area’s civil rights milestones including the Beale Street Baptist Church, Ida B. Wells, African-American Union soldiers and other milestones. Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) as the editor of the Memphis Free Speech wrote about the lynching of three Black businessmen in 1892. And, for her crusade against lynchings, her newspaper office, located on Beale Street, was destroyed and her life was threatened. Robert Reed Church (1839–1912) was an African-American entrepreneur, businessman and landowner in Memphis, Tennessee, who began his rise during the American Civil War. He was the first African-American “millionaire” in the South. (Sept. 12, 2020)
A close-up of the 80-foot-tall mural on the side of a parking garage in downtown Memphis features a visual timeline of the area’s civil rights milestones including the Beale Street Baptist Church, Ida B. Wells, Robert Reed Church, African-American Union soldiers who fought during the American Civil War and other milestones. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Reflection Park in Memphis was established during the 50th anniversary commemorations surrounding the death of Dr. King in Memphis. (Sept. 12, 2020)
The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Reflection Park in Memphis was established during the 50th anniversary commemorations surrounding the death of Dr. King in Memphis. (Sept. 12, 2020)
Entrance sign to the Victorian Village, known as the Millionaire’s Row” along Adams Avenue on the edge of downtown Memphis where mansions boomed from the mid-to-late 1800s when wealthy Memphians built their homes in the area. (Sept. 13, 2020)
The Woodruff-Fontaine House on Adams Avenue in Memphis was built in 1871 along what was formerly known as “Millionaire’s Row,” where wealthy Memphis families built their homes and now part of the Victorian Village in Memphis, a National Historic Neighborhood.  This house was home to two prominent Memphis families. Amos Woodruff, a successful carriage maker and Noland Fontaine, an established businessman who purchased the house from the Woodruffs in 1883, where they lived until 1929. (Sept. 13, 2020)
The Woodruff-Fontaine House, built in 1871 along “Millionaire’s Row,” a museum and part of the Victorian Village on Adams Avenue in Memphis, a National Historic Neighborhood. (Sept. 13, 2020)
The Mallory-Neely House, built circa 1852 along “Millionaire’s Row” is a 25-room Italian Village-style mansion and part of the Victorian Village on Adams Avenue in Memphis, a National Historic Neighborhood. It was once home to several families between 1852 and 1969. (Sept. 13, 2020)
The Mollie Fontaine Taylor House, built around 1890 as a wedding gift from Nolan Fontaine to his daughter Mollie, along “Millionaire’s Row,”
is part of the Victorian Village on Adams Avenue in Memphis, a National Historic Neighborhood. Her father’s home, where Mollie grew up, the Woodruff-Fontaine House, is just across the street and is now a museum. The Mollie Fontaine Taylor House is now a popular bar and restaurant. (Sept. 13, 2020)
The James Lee House, also known as the Harsson-Goyer-Lee House, an 8,100-square-foot constructed in 1848 by William Harsson along “Millionaire’s Row,” part of the Victorian Village on Adams Avenue in Memphis, a National Historic Neighborhood. Harsson’s daughter, Laura, married Charles Wesley Goyer, bought the house in 1852 and had it expanded in 1871. James Lee, a riverboat captain educated at Princeton University, bought the house in 1890. In 1925, it became the James Lee Memorial Art Academy, a predecessor of the Memphis College of Art until 1959 when the school moved to a new location. After that, the home sat vacant for many years and now it is privately owned. (Sept. 13, 2020)
A view of the Peabody Hotel, in downtown Memphis, where I stayed the two nights I was in Memphis. This view is from the parking garage. (Sept. 11, 2020
The parking garage exit for the Peabody Hotel on Main Street where I stayed for my two nights in Memphis. (Sept. 12, 2020
My room at the Peabody Hotel on Main Street where I stayed for my two nights in Memphis. (Sept. 11, 2020)
The lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. I spent two nights here and of the various hotels, where I stayed during my travels, this hotel was definitely the busiest. (Sept. 12, 2020)