Martin Luther King Jr. stayed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, while helping trash workers in a strike. He was assassinated on the balcony outside Room 306 in 1968. The motel closed in 1982 due to financial problems but was purchased and reopened in 1991 as the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum features exhibits on the civil rights movement and includes a recreation of King’s room and the room where his killer stayed.
By the 1960s, racial strife had grabbed the headlines of most US newspapers. At the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. was promoting the advancement of African Americans and fighting for their rights, particularly in the southeastern United States. When he arrived in Tennessee to help the trash workers in their strike, King stayed at the Lorraine Motel when tragedy struck. Currently the National Civil Rights Museum, the Lorraine Motel was the site in Memphis, Tennessee where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
King, along with many of his constituents, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, checked into the Lorraine Motel located on the south side of Memphis on Mulberry Street in late March 1968. The recent garbage collectors’ strike had been the impetus for the King’s arrival, and in preparation for his rally, King checked into the Lorraine Motel. On the morning of April 4, King stepped out onto the balcony outside Room 306 and was shot by an adjacent boarding house. While the controversy over the identity of the killer still swirls, escaped convict James Earl Ray was arrested and tried for the crime and also initially confessed to the murder.
Despite the Lorraine Motel’s popularity among black celebrities, King’s assassination plunged the Lorraine Motel into financial turmoil. It remained open and continued to function as a motel and apartment building until 1982, when it closed due to foreclosure. The motel was purchased in 1987 and reopened in 1991 as the National Civil Rights Museum after extensive additions and renovations to the building. The museum includes both the Lorraine hotel – including the addition added during the renovation – and the boarding house across the street from which James Earl Ray assassinated King.
The Lorraine Motel itself is actually a small part of the museum; most of the exhibits are about the civil rights movement as a whole, highlighting all the notable events that took place up to and beyond King’s assassination. The stories of prominent civil rights advocates, such as Rosa Parks and Roberto Clemente, feature prominently in the exhibits. The museum tour takes visitors to a recreation of the room King stayed in, as well as the room James Earl Ray stayed in until he shot King out of the bathroom window. While the Lorraine Motel’s facade remains identical to how it looked the day King was shot, the motel’s interior has been gutted and replaced with civil rights exhibits.
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