I’m intrigued by two things: the history of music and the Civil Rights movement.
Memphis has its fair share of both.  It is the city of three kings: B.B., Elvis and Martin Luther King.

It was here where Elvis Presley recorded his first album at Sam Philips’s Sun Records in 1952 and from then on Rock-n-Roll was conceived.

On iconic Beale Street, many entrepreneurial Black-owned businesses weathered the fiery riots from the city’s sanitation strike in 1968.

It was then that a revolutionary civil rights leader was invited to come to Memphis that April to seek support for workers who were underpaid and worked in unsafe conditions.

And when he gathered back at the Lorraine Hotel balcony to meet with aides and pray, he was gunned down by a lone sniper forever etching this city in travesty and and impacting the civil rights movement in America.

I was parked a mile away from Beale Street and wondered if I had gotten too close to it all. Parked close enough to bike or walk to the National Civil Rights Museum and Beale Street.

Biked down to Tom Lee Park overlooking the expansive and swift Mississippi River.  Then strolled up to Lorraine Hotel.

I was amazed how everything was restored to its original pristine condition like I had travelled back in time to that tragic spring day of 1968.

Read about my longer stay in Memphis