The Mighty Mississippi River welcomed me from below as my plane touched down softly in TheStateOf Tennessee. It is winter here, the sky is gray and the trees are dead–their dark brown branches as naked as the fallow patchwork of farms that dot the countryside. Memphis. This city, for me, has always held a notorious distinction. It is the place of martyrdom. When I (J) hear the word, “Memphis,” my first thought is the murder of the King.
Always high on My Life “To Do” List was a visit to the Lorraine Motel, the site of Martin Luther King’s assassination. I have always been fascinated with King, his views, his motivations and his murder. So a 1.5 hour layover in Memphis provided a propitious, if fleeting, opportunity to visit this site I’ve so longed to see. I don’t wait until the next time; I try to soak up every minute of my life. So when I touched down, I made a B-line to the taxi stand and told my corpulent, Nigerian taxi driver to “step on it” to the Lorraine Motel.
As I approached the hotel, I took pictures of its exterior–the ever-present reef of white roses in front of Room 306. There was no security around, so I jumped the 2-foot fence surrounding the motel and walked up to the balcony. Me, standing, exactly where King stood when he met death. The feeling was eerie, scary even. I felt subdued as I paused to soak up the feeling. Then a huge, black security guard appeared from nowhere, furious that I had gone up to the balcony without purchasing a ticket at the adjoining museum. As I scattered back down the stairs, a white couple standing there said, “Wow. I bet that was a rush. You stood exactly where he was standing.” As the angry security guard came up yelling at me, I said, “Yup. You only live once, and I’d do it again.” Then I jumped back in the cab and rushed back to the airport for my flight to Mobile.
Dr. King is an everyday inspiration to me, and I listen to his last speech quite often when I’m at work. Most of us usually catch the last few phrases about the Mountaintop, but the entire speech is earth-shattering militancy at its finest. Towards the end of the speech, King talks about the ubiquitous threats on his life, then he leads into the final peroration with “And then I got into Memphis . . .”
Filed under: History
