Bookable
The Lorraine
The building opened in the 1920s as the Windsor Hotel and later became the Marquette Hotel. In 1945 Walter Bailey bought it and renamed it the Lorraine, after his wife Loree and the song “Sweet Lorraine”. In the years of segregation it served Black travellers, and musicians recording at Stax Records in the 1960s stayed there.


4 April 1968
In April 1968 Dr Martin Luther King Jr. was staying in Room 306 of the Lorraine. On 4 April he was shot while standing on the balcony outside his room, and he died in hospital about an hour later.
A museum on the site
The Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation opened the National Civil Rights Museum to the public on 28 September 1991. After a renovation from 2012, the museum reopened on 5 April 2014, and in 2016 it became a Smithsonian Affiliate.


