National Civil Rights Museum

Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968 so it is an appropriate location for this museum. It is a housed in a collection of buildings incorporating the Lorraine Motel, where MLK was gunned down, and also the boarding house across the street from where the assassin shot him.

Chillingly, this is a photo of the actual aiming point that James Earl Ray used when he pulled the trigger. MLK was on the balcony opposite, where the white wreath is above the right-hand white car.

Many of the exhibits related to MLK’s murder. The perpetrator was a burglar and armed robber, James Earl Ray, who had escaped from prison the year before. People love conspiracy theories: who really killed JFK or Princess Diana; did they really land on the moon; flying saucer government cover-up etc. Here we have another one.

James Earl Ray had no known accomplices, appeared to be spending money he didn’t have quite freely before the murder and until he was apprehended two months after at Heathrow Airport, London. He had no particular motive for the killing and he wasn’t especially anti-black. He wasn’t known to be a rifle marksman. There was no apparent financial gain, the one thing that does motivate a robber. So, who knows? One sure thing- somebody does!

The museum does go through a summary of civil rights history in a continuous-loop film and a series of well-presented panels, an example of which is below.

There was a wall of fame, those who had contributed to the civil rights cause. It was impressive even if we didn’t know some of the people, and those we had heard of, what exactly did they do?

With it being on the actual site of MLK’s murder, you felt you were walking in the footsteps of history and the museum uses this emotive springboard very effectively. However, this is the National Civil Rights Museum and I felt that some areas of civil rights were under-represented, for instance Native Americans, who suffered injustices as least as great as African Americans.