Cover photo by Steve Jones

Heartbreak Motel

Making the most of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and death at Memphis' expanded Civil Rights Museum

BY BERYL LIEF BENDERLY

The Lorraine Motel, on Mulberry Street in a drab section of downtown Memphis, never ranked among the nation’s distinguished hostelries. But if, on April 4, 1968, you had any awareness of world events, the look of the Lorraine—its ordinary plate-glass windows, nondescript draperies, and unexceptional second-floor balcony with its angular metal railing—probably remains etched in your memory from news photos that appeared around the world. In the most famous of these, a group of people stands, most pointing obliquely upward, while a man lies crumpled at their feet.

Just moments before, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in town to support a local garbage collectors’ strike, had stepped from Room 306 onto that balcony. The assassin’s bullet that found him there also propelled the Lorraine, instantly and forever, from obscurity into the realm of American sacred places. The building would never again be just an ordinary motor inn where, during segregation days, African-American travelers were able to put up for the night. It would not return to being simply a business in decline after lodgings serving whites could no longer refuse to serve blacks.

But with the motel’s anguished history and need for an economic base, what should it become instead? This question vexed Memphians for two decades until, in 1991, the Lorraine was transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum. In an effort spearheaded by local black citizens and funded by state and local governments, the Lorraine’s facade was incorporated into a museum containing both a chronicle of

the movement that brought King to world prominence and a memorial at the place where he died. Not everyone agreed, however, with this use of such an intensely emotional site. To some, the museum scanted King’s spirituality, his philosophy of nonviolence, and his concern for the poor. To others, its message felt overly divisive and pessimistic, ignoring social changes that had occurred since 1968.

Then, last September, the museum expanded into a second building, the rooming house across Mulberry Street where the fatal shot originated. It installed new exhibits there, including one displaying the murder weapon and others celebrating racial progress since 1968. Yet again, some critics are raising questions about the nature of King’s legacy and how best to preserve deeply charged historical memory.

Does concentrating even more on King’s death belie the work of his life? Does the emphasis on the past discount human needs in the present, including those of the surrounding neighborhood? In the museum’s defense, its supporters argue that the preservation of history for future generations is essential, that it deepens understanding of our national experience, and that attracting visitors to the site creates economic opportunities that can only help the city’s poor.

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