This part of our tour was really gripping. For me it was like "immediate history." I remember the Civil Rights activism of the late fifties and especially the sixties. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated when I was in college, so I have a strong memory about that. I've read about the killing and I've seen accounts of it on TV. On this day, I was standing where it all took place.
What I didn't expect was the extent of the Civil Righs Museum on the property. There's a replica of a "whites only" lunch counter where sit-ins took place; there's a bus where you can sit and experience what it was like to take public transportation during segregation; there's the actual Freedom Riders' Greyhound bus that was bombed out ~ a blackened, twisted reminder of a not-so-distant past. There's even a life- size display of the garbage truck and workers and a description of the discrimination and danger of their work at that time. (The reason Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis that fateful day was to lend his support to the garbage workers' strike.)
The museum is located in what had been the Lorraine Motel. We went through the front entrance, then wound our way through the sights and sounds of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's, eventually ending up at the room Martin Luther King, Jr. had been staying. The room is behind glass and has been left just as it was that day. Looking acrosss the street, one can see the window in the building where the shot is said to have been fired.
There had been discussion years ago of tearing down this building. Thankfully it still stands. This is sacred ground of the Civil Rights Movement.
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