Editor's Note: Preston Lauterbach is the author of Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers (2019), Beale Street Dynasty: Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis (2015), and The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ’n’ Roll (2012). This story originally appeared in our April 2008 issue and was compiled as part of the “Memphis at 200” collection published in April 2019. We consider it one of the best accounts of the history of the National Civil Rights Museum.
If the late film director Robert Altman made one of his intertwined tales portraying modern Memphis, it would have looked something like this. An ensemble cast, each character powerful and charismatic, each representing what Memphis has become since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: D’Army Bailey, Lois DeBerry, Roscoe Dixon, John Ford, Dick Hackett, Benjamin Hooks, J.R. “Pitt” Hyde III, Tom Jones, Bill Morris, Chuck Scruggs, the Rev. James Smith, Maxine Smith, Jesse Turner Sr., and A.W. Willis Jr. For the plot: white mayors, businessmen, and government officials working hand-in-hand with black politicians and professionals, contrasting the impossibility of such cooperation here in the dark spring of 1968. And for the movie’s setting: One could ask for no more scarred or sacred ground than the place that saw the sacrifice of an American icon.
This, however, is no fiction. These personalities clashed, cooperated, sometimes circumvented one another, and formed coalitions toward the unprecedented goal of building a National Civil Rights Museum on that bloodstained ground. The story’s conclusion, however apparent to anyone who’s visited the South Main district, was anything but foregone in the days, months, and years after April 4, 1968.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became the face — and voice — of the American civil rights movement. Photograph courtesy Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries.
Had you gone to Mulberry Street 10 years after King’s death, you would have seen two ramshackle shotgun houses, a raggedy warehouse, an abandoned nightclub, and a lounge around the Lorraine Motel. Aside from the lounge, the only profession functioning near the Lorraine was the world’s oldest. Prostitutes rented far more rooms at the rundown motel than travelers, though a few permanent tenants lived there. Weeds pushed through the concrete of the dry swimming pool. Paint flaked from the room doors, a few dangling open from their hinges.
“All I could figure was that the white city fathers saw it as a tragic site that would go away. There was a certain air of defeatism among black people. They didn’t seem to perceive that this place of tragedy was a treasure.” — D’Army Bailey
Visitors still wanted to see the forgotten pivot point of American history. They stood on broken glass and looked up toward the balcony. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) — the organization King helped found in 1957 and died as president of — installed a plaque and a glass enclosure around the door to Room 306. You could walk upstairs and see the meager shrine inside Room 306. Motel owner Walter Bailey’s (no relation to D’Army Bailey) wife, Loree, suffered a stroke the day of the King shooting and died five days later. Walter displayed her high-heeled shoes and books from her library near the sheet that had been thrown over King after the shooting, and the dishes from which he ate a last supper of catfish. A few Ernest Withers photographs of King in Memphis adorned the walls. Visitors could drop a coin or fold a bill to place in a slot outside the display.
D’Army Bailey, born in Memphis, was active in civil rights as a student at Southern University from 1959 to 1962, and as an organizer in Manhattan after completing his law degree at Yale. Bailey returned to his hometown to practice law in 1973 and first visited the Lorraine in 1976. “It was depressing,” he recalls. “All I could figure was that the white city fathers saw it as a tragic site that would go away. There was a certain air of defeatism among black people. They didn’t seem to perceive that this place of tragedy was a treasure.”
Chuck Scruggs, known today as Mr. Chuck, host of a local children’s television show, came to Memphis as general manager of radio station WDIA in 1972. In the late 1970s, Scruggs’ wife, Imogene, led guests of the Memphis Council for International Friendship on tours of Memphis. “One of the requests they’d make was to see the site where Dr. King was assassinated,” Scruggs recalls. “The visitors would be in awe of the site.”
Walter Bailey, still scraping by at the Lorraine Motel, reached out to Scruggs for help preserving the site. Scruggs, aglow from a triumph in saving the town of Mound Bayou, consulted his weary staff about a potential “Save the Lorraine” campaign. “They said, ‘No way,’” he recalls.
“That was my reaction too,” Scruggs continues. “But I thought toward what would happen with that site without some special care. I told my staff, ‘If this becomes a warehouse, the blacks will feel that the whites should have saved it, and whites would feel that blacks should have saved it.’”
“Fifteen years after the assassination, nobody did anything to protect the Lorraine.” — Chuck Scruggs
Meanwhile, D’Army Bailey’s interest in the Lorraine grew. “I didn’t make any commitment in my own mind that I was going to do anything about it,” he says. “One day I was going to the little convenience store on the corner of Pauline and Vance to buy beer. There’s a laundromat next door where Walter Bailey, the owner of the Lorraine, went to do his laundry. As he came out of the laundromat, I came out of the convenience store, and we talked out front there about his property. If the prostitutes hadn’t been providing business, he couldn’t have kept the doors open.”
From the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, this is the view of the boarding house across the street. King stayed in Room 306. Photograph courtesy Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries.
Prostitution and the nickels left at the Lorraine shrine failed to keep the motel afloat, and the property went into foreclosure in April 1982. Scruggs’ sense of responsibility to history overpowered his fatigue. “Fifteen years after the assassination, nobody did anything to protect the Lorraine,” he says.
Scruggs contacted key WDIA staffers A.C. Williams, Carl Conner, and Bill Atkins, along with prominent African-American banker and accountant Jesse Turner Sr. and D’Army Bailey to meet at the Petroleum Club Downtown. Turner, president of Tri-State Bank, would be named the first black Shelby County Commission chairman in 1983. They formed the Martin Luther King Memphis Memorial Foundation, which D’Army Bailey chartered as a tax-exempt nonprofit; Scruggs was the first president. At its outset the foundation had no money and no designs on the motel apart from protection.
The foundation made another key addition with A.W. Willis Jr., an attorney and mortgage broker. Willis earned a law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1953 at a time when African Americans were segregated from Southern law schools. He returned to Memphis and opened the first integrated law firm in the city, which represented James Meredith in 1961 when Meredith broke the color barrier at the University of Mississippi. Willis built more political muscle in 1964 as the first African American elected to the state general assembly since Reconstruction and as the corner man in Harold Ford Sr.’s 1974 election to Congress.
In existence for only a few days, the group found much to accomplish. First, they received a letter from Coretta Scott King’s attorney requesting that they not use her husband’s name. Members rechristened their group the Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation. Scruggs visited Walter Bailey, asked him to take down the shrine in Room 306, and struck a deal to purchase the Lorraine for $240,000. Scruggs obtained a stay on the foreclosure and hatched a plan to raise the necessary funds.
The museum symbolizes the city’s progress from April 1968. Photograph courtesy Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries.
A crowd of curious citizens and TV cameras gathered on the Shelby County Courthouse steps on the cold and breezy day of December 13, 1982, to see history sold. The Lorraine Foundation had failed to raise the $240,000 to buy the motel’s mortgage, making the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination the featured property at a foreclosure auction.
D’Army Bailey, Scruggs, Willis, and Turner represented the Lorraine Foundation, with Bailey doing the group’s bidding against six others including Harry Sauer, the holder of the Lorraine Motel mortgage. The foundation carried $65,000 — $10,000 from Paul Shapiro, owner of Lucky Hearts Cosmetics, and $55,000 from donations — to the courthouse steps that morning. James Smith, president of the local chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) — the union of Memphis sanitation workers — delivered to the group a check for $25,000. Other bidders dropped off as the price of history jumped in $5,000 increments. But it became clear to the foundation that their $90,000 would not carry the day, particularly as they looked over at their only remaining competition, Sauer.
As the figure neared the foundation’s threshold, Turner made it known that Tri-State Bank would loan the foundation $50,000 on a handshake if they could find an underwriter. Willis searched the crowd for friendly faces, and found Paul Shapiro to guarantee $25,000. AFSCME’s Smith guaranteed the other half, boosting the foundation bidding power to $140,000. Bailey says that he went $4,000 past the foundation’s limit, and punctuated his last bid to signal the exhaustion of funds to Sauer.
Sauer went silent and the gavel dropped.
“It was a glorious feeling,” Scruggs recalls.
Bailey concurs, adding, “But what are we going to do with it?”
The first years were a struggle. “We went to [Walter Bailey] and told him to keep operating it, and keep whatever money he made,” D’Army Bailey recalls. “I would have to call Memphis Light, Gas and Water and ask them not to shut off the utilities, and to their credit they didn’t.”
“The person we dealt with the most in those days, and the unsung hero of the museum, was A.W. Willis. The county became involved because of their respect for him.” — Tom Jones
D’Army Bailey assumed the foundation’s presidency from Scruggs in late 1983 and took a dominant role in shaping the project. “It came to me that if we’re going to have the site of King’s death, let’s use it to tell the world about the whole struggle.”
Bailey claims the concept, but Scruggs and others credit Willis with naming it the National Civil Rights Museum. Bailey acknowledges Willis’ contributions, though he says that he and advertising executive John Malmo actually named it.
Tom Jones became involved in the Lorraine project in 1985 while serving as an aide to Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris. “The person we dealt with the most in those days, and the unsung hero of the museum, was A.W. Willis,” Jones recalls. “The county became involved because of their respect for him.”
Morris had been Shelby County Sheriff when King was assassinated, and transported James Earl Ray from London, where Ray was apprehended, to Memphis. Elected county mayor in 1976, he recognized the unique opportunity to make the museum a reality. “We’d approved projects for different constituencies, but this was the first time that I’d had the opportunity to take a strong stand for the African Americans in our community,” Morris explains.
Bailey says that city mayor Dick Hackett was a willing and powerful ally as well. The mayors’ participation in the museum project contrasts sharply with Henry Loeb’s refusal to negotiate with Memphis sanitation workers. The city and county’s initial involvement amounted to $10,000 for a consultant to issue a call for bids on the project. “When we saw Ben Lawless’ plan, it clicked right away that this was the guy we’d need,” Bailey says.
Lawless, a retired exhibition director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, first came to Memphis in the early 1980s to consult with an upstart Elvis Presley Enterprises as it attempted to make a tourist attraction out of Graceland. With the property acquired and a concept in place, the foundation needed only to collect Lawless’ estimated cost for the project: $8.8 million. The museum design firm Eisterholdllewellyn won the privilege to develop the exhibits. Distinguished historians Spencer Crew and James Horton — both African-American — defined the story told in the museum. “We were only $8.8 million and the $50,000 that we owed Tri-State Bank short,” Bailey quips.
Jones and Morris, though supportive of the project, understood that the public might not wholeheartedly concur. “It was an incredibly hard sell,” Jones explains. “The political dynamic was against doing something ‘black.’ The county legislative body was predominantly white, Republican, and the city’s was essentially the same. This project was the crucible for Memphis.”
Meanwhile, Willis and Bailey, along with John Dudas and Ann Abernathy of the Center City Commission, burned countless gallons of gasoline on I-40 between Memphis and Nashville as they aggressively pushed the project in the state legislature. They went door-to-door down the state house halls seeking votes for the bill Dixon had introduced — with the request reduced to $4.4 million per Lawless’ suggestion of a state, county, and city split — to finance the museum’s construction. State senator John Ford and representatives Dixon and Lois DeBerry rallied other black legislators to show united support, and the bill passed the state legislature in spring 1986.
Jones thinks that the museum development marked a point of arrival in Memphis’ history. “This museum could symbolize all that Memphis can be. There seemed to be a new momentum to reaching across racial divides that were like chasms in this city.” Bailey says that with the state funds approved, the city and county fell in line with their shares. The National Civil Rights Museum had $8.8 million behind it by summer 1987, a time of triumph and impending tragedy. Willis, one of the inspirational and indispensable figures in the making of the museum, fell ill and died July 14, 1988, at age 63.
Controversy followed the museum’s windfall. Ford disputed the selection of Tony Bologna as architect on the project. Eventually, state architect Mike Fitts, who supervised the project, chose the black-owned Nashville firm of McKissack and McKissack.
The Lorraine Motel ceased operations January 10, 1988. Longtime tenant Jackie Smith refused to leave. She closed herself up in her room and was forcibly removed on March 2nd. She set up a protest outside the museum that continues to this day. Despite lawsuits, civic arguments, and Smith’s civil disobedience, construction of the National Civil Rights Museum began on June 25, 1990.
D’Army Bailey recognized the need to diversify the Lorraine Foundation’s board of directors and add to the group of political professionals and civil rights veterans he’d assembled. “We needed to raise a half-million dollars for artwork for the museum entryway and to finance operations,” Bailey explains. “I had come to know a handful of white businessmen with Leadership Memphis. When I needed money to do this artwork, I decided to go to Pitt Hyde.”
“When I came to Memphis to join the march along with Mrs. King [April 8, 1968], I could not even think about coming to this site. I did not want to see the place where he lost his life. But today I’m very happy and proud to be here and be part of this museum.” — Rosa Parks
Hyde, founder of AutoZone, says that the museum concept fit nicely with the philanthropic goals of the Hyde Foundation to promote education in Memphis and make the city attractive to skilled workers. His involvement also fulfilled a personal ideal. “I was not an activist, but I’d been very supportive of the movement,” Hyde says.
As the project’s driving force, Bailey felt a singular responsibility to the museum, but less so to his board. He maintains that he could not work with the Nashville development group while clearing every decision with the Memphis board. “They knew things were happening,” Bailey says, “but they didn’t have any grip on them, because they were isolated from it.” He disrupted meetings to prevent the board from offering input. “I would conduct a one-man filibuster to keep them from voting, if necessary,” he says.
“The meetings were explosive,” Jones recalls. “In time, it just wore a majority of the members down. Those days were often D’Army screaming at Pitt Hyde, or somebody else.”
“It was a power struggle,” Scruggs says.
The museum moved forward despite the deepening of personal conflict on the board. On July 4, 1991, a crowd of more than 5,000 gathered on a steamy morning to witness Rosa Parks cut a red, white, and blue ribbon at the museum dedication ceremony. “When I came to Memphis to join the march along with Mrs. King [April 8, 1968], I could not even think about coming to this site,” she told the crowd. “I did not want to see the place where he lost his life. But today I’m very happy and proud to be here and be part of this museum.”
Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, then flirting with a run at the Oval Office, looked on as Jesse Jackson addressed the contingent. “I stood here 23 years ago when the fateful shot was fired,” Jackson bellowed. “It’s tough to be here. The wound is still open.”
Certain political implications of that day further illustrated the differences between Bailey and board colleagues. “Some of us felt that maybe Bill Clinton shouldn’t be there, or that someone from both sides should be there,” Scruggs says. “I was concerned about the organization getting caught up in political conflict.”
At 10 a.m. on Saturday, September 28, 1991, the National Civil Rights Museum opened to the public when museum foundation charter members Bailey and Scruggs joined Allegra Turner and Archie Willis III, wife and son of Jesse Turner and A.W. Willis Jr., respectively, to sever symbolic chains of oppression. Meanwhile, Jackie Smith continued her protest, blaring King’s delivery of his “I Have a Dream” speech from a portable cassette player during the opening festivities. The museum hosted between 800 to 900 visitors that day.
Perhaps, as Bailey asserts, the museum required a bullish, dominant leader to see it to completion. That job done, though, the museum board sought change. “Members of the board felt that we were on the verge of squandering everything that we had worked for,” Jones says. “This institution is bigger than all of us. Chuck said, ‘If we all have to go, then let’s all leave. It’s this museum that’s important.’”
Scruggs backed these words up less than a year after the museum’s opening. “I led the effort to get Bailey off the board,” he explains. “I was chairman of the bylaws committee. What we did was set term limits. I knew that I was out when I agreed to the term limits, but I couldn’t think of another way to do it. I crashed the plane with D’Army and me in it.”
Meanwhile, Maxine Smith, president of the local NAACP chapter, put out feelers to a potential replacement, outgoing NAACP national president Benjamin Hooks. On June 13, 1992, the board voted Hooks in as president. Bailey walked out of the meeting and resigned his post on the board.
“It hurt and still hurts,” Bailey says. “But it wasn’t the first time I’d hurt. I resigned because the board was solidly against me. What was I to stay there for?” That, as Bailey says, wouldn’t be the “D’Army style.”
Today, the NCRM is an interactive experience motivating and challenging everyone to honor MLK’s dream of human rights for all. Photograph by Larry Kuzniewski.
The making of the National Civil Rights Museum left some of its hardest workers bitter. It simply would not have happened, though, had a coalition of diverse individuals not rolled up their sleeves and sweated together. The museum symbolizes the city’s progress from April 1968.
“There will be a point in time when historians look back at the museum as the bookend to the awfulness of the King tragedy,” Jones says. “The museum process showed that good things could happen if people didn’t just react to the same old prejudices and messages.”
The museum’s effect on visitors stems from that spirit. “Someone told me that standing there looking at King’s room was the most powerful moment of his life,” Jones says. “And that’s happening every day down there.”
“I’ll never forget when Nelson Mandela came to tour the museum,” Hyde says. “We got out on the balcony, and Mandela stopped. He said: ‘I can feel the presence of Dr. King. This is holy ground.’” Beverly Robertson, executive director of the museum since 1997, admits that the 17-year-old facility needs some upgrades. She foresees structural renovation, technological updates of the exhibits, and a national marketing campaign in the museum’s future. But she also wishes to see new stories told within the museum walls.
“We haven’t really told the backstory of this place,” she says. “We don’t talk about Mr. Bailey, who owned the Lorraine Motel. But we have to embrace all of those people who had a role in making this happen. I don’t want to marginalize any of them. That’s one story we’ve got to tell here in the museum — how it moved from the Lorraine Motel to become the National Civil Rights Museum.”
