photograph by karen pulfer focht
Carolyn Michael-Banks greets Chicago visitors Maryann and Reginald Marsh outside The Peabody.
Driving around Memphis, bragging on all things great that derive from the Bluff City, Carolyn Michael-Banks, founder of A Tour of Possibilities, gives Black history-focused tours. With blues playing on her radio, Michael-Banks, also known as Queen, takes visitors to sites of historical and cultural significance to African Americans.
photograph by karen pulfer focht
The “I Am A Man” Plaza across from Clayborn Temple.
She highlights the best things about our city. But Queen does not sugarcoat the history. Driving along Riverside Drive, touting the majestic Mississippi River, the colorful bridges, the remarkable story of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Pyramid, our amazing musical history and Beale Street, she reminds her guests, “If this body of water could speak, I can only imagine the stories it would tell.”
Looking over the river, Michael-Banks offers a view of the city from a different vantage point. “On this body of water, two commodities were transported that changed the economy of this area,” she says. As her voice tone changes, she continues, “Cotton and enslaved people. On this same river, many used to escape slavery as well.”
photograph by karen pulfer focht
The “Equality Trailblazers” monument, located at the University of Memphis law school, celebrates leaders in the suffrage movement.
For two-and-one-half hours, she highlights Black-owned businesses and the contributions that African Americans have made to make Memphis a great and significant city. She boasts about our soul food, blues music and B.B. King, COGIC, Stax, Robert Church, and Barack Obama’s visit.
But the guided historical tour also does not hide the darker side of the city’s history including injustice, segregation, and racism. Queen reminds Chicagoans Maryann and Reginald Marsh, touring on this day, that in front of them is the location where Nathan Bedford Forrest once offered “Fresh Negro’s For Sale.” Woven through the ride that includes various wonderful landmarks, magical stories of inspiring people, and popular Memphis attractions, she also tells of people who lived in fear of lynchings, of city riots, a civil rights struggle, and the Martin Luther King assassination.
There’s no doubt about her love for the city. What she loves to share most is a sense of hope, optimism, and deep respect for the people that came before her, the people like Tom Lee, Rosa Parks, Danny Thomas, and Ida B. Wells, “the people who saw things that appeared to be impossible, but made them possible, in spite of.”
That is why she has named her venture A Tour of Possibilities.
photograph by karen pulfer focht
A larger-than-life statue of B.B. King greets visitors inside the Tennessee Welcome Center downtown.
