Today was scheduled to be the hottest day of the week so we limited our time outside by doing two museums. First we walked down Main Street – through a film set although we didn’t recognise anyone so it can’t have been a major movie, and finally arrived at the Lorraine Motel which is now home to the National Civil Rights Museum. It is a little strange as the signage is all still in place and they have a couple of Cadillacs in the car park and apart from the wreath on the balcony outside room 306 it just looks like any other American motel. We went into the museum and you start right at the very beginning with a room that describes the transportation of slaves from Africa, then we went into the cinema to watch a film about the early struggle. The museum was really good (although freezing cold!) as it had a lot of information about the whole civil rights movement, I hadn’t realised that after the civil war in 1861 there were about 300 black senators and a few black congressmen, their right to vote was gradually eroded and the southern states just ignored both the constitution and the Supreme Court rulings that said what they were doing was illegal. They implemented various policies that actually stopped blacks from being able to vote such as literacy tests, during a period where blacks were refused schooling, and the grandfather clause which stated that those who had enjoyed the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867 or their lineal descendants, would be exempt from educational property or tax requirements for voting. Because the former slaves had not be granted the right to vote until the adoption of the 15th Amendment in 1870 these clauses worked effectively to exclude black people from the vote but ensured that many impoverished and illiterate whites did have the vote. The US Supreme Court declared in 1915 that his was unconstitutional because it violated equal voting rights but it wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1865 that Congress put an end to this practice. However, it seems that all that actually happened was the boundaries were redrawn, blacks were intimidated and sometimes lynched for trying to register to vote and in some cases the voting register consisted of of 120% of the white population. There was also a lot of information about the fight to end segregation both in education and in general. The fury and resentment this provoked was astounding, I always had a respect for those that fought for the right to vote but seeing some of the films and news reels along with first hand accounts and letters from prison I can only admire the courage they showed in fighting for these rights and the willingness to continue non violent protests when they were being beaten and gassed by civilians and the police alike. I also hadn’t realised how reluctant Kennedy was to get involved, he was more worried about the Russians than the problems in his own country. Finally we walked through the room that Martin Luther King Junior stayed in the day he was assassinated. This hotel was one of the few that black people would safely stay during the period, he was in town to help the sanitation workers fight for rights a fight that continued after his death and continued for almost 30 years. They eventually won a basic living wage and were paid on rain days plus some basic health and safety improvements, black workers didn’t actually get pension rights until the late 1990s. From here you cross the road to the rooming house from where James Earl Ray shot Dr King, they have blocked off the actual window but you can look through the one next to it. There is also a lot of information from the police investigation as well as a time line that describes the event leading up to the assassination. By the time we had finished walking round we had spent over 4 hours in the museum so we set off to get some lunch. After lunch we went to the Cotton Museum which was another really interesting museum. It is housed in the old Cotton Exchange and the trading room is still in place although no longer in use. This is where the cotton farmers would sell their bounty to traders who would then sell it onto the textile manufacturers around the world. There were a couple of really interesting videos shot in 1930 and another one in 1950 that had a very ‘positive bias’ on working in the cotton industry. Memphis is still one of the biggest spot cotton markets in the world and even in the days before easy access to long distance phone calls the market showed the prices of cotton in Liverpool and Manchester which were telegraphed over to be added to the board. We spent a couple of hours in here then decided to head back to the hotel. It was great that we hadn’t had to spend too long outside and we had been to two really interesting museum as I now feel like I know a lot more. Tomorrow we leave Memphis and head to Oxford although we have one more music stop on route as we are going to Graceland.
