Arts
Music is king in Memphis, no Elvis pun intended. And, year-long music events, concerts and festivals dominate the area. In fact, while Memphis in May is known mainly for its food, it is also a massive music festival to help people dance off all of those calories.
However, there are other museums and celebrations of music that enrich the area’s cultural envi-ronment.
For example, The Memphis Rock `n' Soul Museum, featuring the Smithsonian Institution's Rock `n' Soul: Social Crossroads exhibition, not only documents the history of rock and soul music; it makes the very persuasive argument that the arts (in this case, music) was one of the prime driv-ing factors in the birth of the civil rights movement.
In the days when segregation and inequality was the order of the day in the south, music offered a bridge between white and black. Youths from both races enjoyed the same music and offered the first suggestions that the separated peoples might be able to live together in peace.
That theme leads the cultural and artistic connection directly to the National Civil Rights Mu-seum. According to the museum’s own presentations: “The aftershock of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968 would plunge the Lorraine Motel, a small minority-owned business in the south-end of downtown Memphis, into a long and steep decline.”
“By 1982, the Lorraine Motel was a foreclosed property. A group of prominent Memphians, concerned that this historic site would be destroyed through continued neglect and indifference, formed the Martin Luther King Memorial Foundation to save the Lorraine. Using a design report by a former Smithsonian Institution, Benjamin Lawless, the Foundation started seeking funding for the nation’s first comprehensive exhibit chronicling America’s civil rights movement.”
Now, the museum is an essential historical and cultural stop for city visitors and residents.