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An Apollonaut travel guide
A motel in the city.
An introduction to downtown Memphis, where the National Civil Rights Museum stands on Mulberry Street.
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Read the city around you
The museum is at 450 Mulberry Street in downtown Memphis. The modern museum building stands behind the preserved front of the Lorraine Motel.
A city guide can give context without turning a neighbourhood into a backdrop. Here, more than anywhere, the place itself is part of the history.
A preserved motel and a new museum
The Nashville firm McKissack and McKissack designed the modern museum building, on grounds not directly connected with the assassination, while the Lorraine’s motel front and balcony were kept.
Begin with a detail and ask what it records. A photograph alone cannot tell you who stayed here, who worked here or the conditions in which they lived.
A Memphis chapter
The museum shows how Memphis keeps a difficult history in view: a motel that served Black travellers, the place of a national tragedy and now a museum of the civil rights movement.
Look at the meeting of the two: a preserved 1960s motel and a museum built to explain it.
Make room for context
Pair this city reading with the museum’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places, commissions their restoration or represents their makers.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
