MEMPHIS TRILOGY II -- I JUST LOOKED AROUND AND HE'S GONE

Every black man is his own Moses in this exodus. ​

Wisdom Wherever You Find It – Special Edition
 
Every black man is his own Moses in this exodus.  Unidentified man during Jim Crow

We came around the corner and there was the sign for the Lorraine Motel.  We parked the car and started to walk to the entrance of the National Civil Rights Museum, and I lost my breath. There was the balcony, the railing, the door marked 306. My reaction was not elegant or polite – I interrupted a conversation.

I was fifteen on that day in 1968, not yet enlightened enough to comprehend what happened. In the years that followed I gained an increasing appreciation of the man who was murdered there and knowledge about the murder itself. I saw the pictures. I met the men who were on the balcony with him at that moment.  But I have to say that nothing prepared me for my reaction.

And I have been to other historical sites. I reached back across thousands of years to touch original buildings and roads in the Middle East. I peered into ovens at crematoria in Poland. I crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge with John Lewis, stood in Dr. King’s pulpit in Montgomery, gave a speech from the spot that he Had a Dream. My friend went to the Texas Book Depository and Dealey Plaza.  He agreed with me – this was different.

To the credit of a few people with deep social consciousness, the motel – one of the few that served a Black clientele during segregated times – was transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum. From slavery to emancipation, from Jim Crow to voting rights, from activism to assassination to renewed activism, we climbed slowly across the first floor and then up the ramps to the second on a journey through the history of involuntary Americans. We heard the groans on the middle passage, visited the inadequate classrooms, sat next to heroes on a bus, and arrived to see the room where it happened. I stood alone looking out of the window onto the balcony and recited the liturgical memorial prayer, more to comfort myself than anything else. Only then did I begin to get my lost breath back.

Across the street from the motel is a tunnel that leads to the boarding house from which the murder likely took place.  It is a clear view from the bathroom window to room 306.  In the renovated space behind it is the evidence collected to convict the shooter, and a very thorough refutation of the alternate theories about the act.  There is a memorial wall to others assassinated for their beliefs – perhaps the only place Malcom X and Yitzchak Rabin appear together.

Perhaps you think I have shared a travelogue of one small space.  Memphis is known for many things – barbecue, BB King, the Million Dollar Quartet, the Peabody ducks, and these days for an increasingly admirable downtown renewal.  Of course, it is also known for the Lorraine Motel and what happened in front of Room 306. Each one has a backstory and a lasting presence.  But while you can go there to feel good about most of Memphis, you can’t visit the Lorraine Motel and come away feeling better.

Instead, if you immerse yourself in the story of Africans and their descendants in America, you come away with a feeling – accurate, I think – that even if you are the offspring of immigrants yourself (and most of the rest of us are), you are enslaved to the legacy of how our fellow Americans were treated. It is a long walk to liberation, one for which every person is their own Moses.

The walkway to the museum used to be its parking lot.  Now it is a plaza from which to approach and encounter, from just below, the line of fire that took away his breath. For a moment, and for a couple of hours thereafter, my breath was taken, too. My ancestors came to these shores in search of the promise of a much better life. They found it, and they bequeathed it to me. But, as Elie Wiesel said about people who convert to Judaism, they are entrusted not only with our dreams, but also our nightmares. Each person who loses their breath at Room 306 has the responsibility to awaken, reclaim it, and continue the exodus.