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jcoghlan1
Nov 197 min read

450 Mulberry Street, Memphis, Tennessee.

Take Two. Travels in my van.

Memphis Tennessee



Photo:  The Lorraine Motel, National Civil Rights Museum, 450 Mulberry Street, Memphis, Tennessee. A wreath marks the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April, 1968


Museums are much more interesting these days than the silent mausoleums, mostly filled with stuffed animals of my school-going years in the 1960s and 70s. I vividly remember the museums of my hometown, Grahamstown, now Makhanda, in South Africa.


I used to walk past them daily on my way to and from school, and sometimes, I would wander into the large halls to shelter from the scathing heat on my walk home. My favourite exhibition was inside the 1820 Settlers History Museum, where I daydreamed in front of the detailed stitching, beads, and embroidery of the English Settlers women’s dresses, shoes, gloves, and hats.


My second favourite exhibition was at the Albany Museum. Walking through the enormous doors across a glossy parka floor, a grass hut inhabited by clay models of a San family of Indigenous hunter-gatherers was the welcoming exhibit. A fake fire flickered red in the middle of the hut where polystyrene pap stiffened. I would imagine the warmth of the fire while the glassy-eyed San family stared back at me, unblinking.


As a child of apartheid, I did not question that the San people were “exhibited” in the same building as the stuffed animals and natural science exhibitions. I was also unaware of the Civil Rights Activism, a growing force in the internationally culturally and politically dominant United States. It was not until my teenage years that  I became attentive to the injustices back home. I shared deep cultural “white guilt” and shame with many of my countrymen. However, it is only in the past twenty years, since immigrating to Canada and becoming more immersed in North American culture, that I slowly learnt that during the shameful years of apartheid, similar shameful and abusive laws and behaviour occurred simultaneously in Canada and the USA—the land for the free. 


My yearning to travel the beautiful continent of North America has taken me on travels in my van to extraordinary places in the US. My love of history and desire to learn more about the US steered me to The Lorraine Motel, a place of historical significance and now, an interactive and immersive National Civil Rights Museum and Smithsonian Affiliate, intelligently curated and respectfully managed, on 450 Mulberry Street, Memphis, Tennessee.  



Photo:  The Lorraine Motel, National Civil Rights Museum,


The motel was purchased in 1945 by black businessman Walter Bailey. It became a destination for black travellers, listed in the Negro Motorists Green Book or “Green Guide,” which identified establishments that welcomed black travellers when Jim Crow restrictions offered limited options for services and lodging. However, it was the shock assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on one of its balconies in April 1968 that forever etched the motel into America’s collective memory. Today, it is a lively, interactive museum that curates the journey of African Americans from 1519, when the first slave ship sailed directly from Africa to North America, to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.


The last time I visited the museums in Grahamstown (Mkhanda), I was a student at Rhodes University in the 80s. It was before contemporary thinking, fresh creativity, and the digital age upgraded museums into animated and sometimes even noisy educational hubs. The sacred halls of silent parka floors, hushed footsteps and whispered comments have disappeared with my dusty memories. 


I have the most profound respect for the academics who continue to curate the history of my hometown and the Eastern Cape. Travellers passing through this quaint historical town may do well to pause and visit these buildings, most especially my favourite, the Observatory Museum. 


Established in 1855, the Albany Museum now consists of seven buildings. It is the second oldest museum in South Africa, with a new and fresh political take on natural sciences and history. The 1820 Settlers Museum, now The History Museum, states “originally focused only on the contribution of the 1820 British Settlers and their descendants, but it now is all-encompassing and includes history of the people who live or have lived in the Eastern Cape.” I am proud of these changes. My home country has grown from its once-apartheid rule some 30 years ago to embrace a more compassionate, intelligent and inclusive way of viewing our world and history, and possibly, a more accurate rendition. As I travel, I see parallels in the political and moral conscience of once-colonized democratic countries such as South Africa and the USA.


But, let me invite you back to my visit to the Lorraine Motel, National Civil Rights Museum. I step onto a bus. The bus conductor is barking instructions at me. The lone figure of Rosa Parks sits near the front of the bus. An empty seat calls me to sit beside her and reimagine the past.



Photo:  The Lorraine Motel, National Civil Rights Museum, Rosa Parks.


On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was riding a crowded Montgomery city bus when the driver noticed white passengers were standing in the aisle. He asked Rosa Parks and other Black passengers to surrender their seats and stand. Three passengers left their seats, but Rosa Parks, an energetic activist, refused. Her arrest and fines for this indiscretion were contested in court and challenged legal segregation in Alabama. 


“I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as old then. I was 42. No, the only tired I was was tired of giving in.” Rosa Parks: My Story, written by Jim Haskins.


The Montgomery Improvement Association, led by Martin Luther King Jr, boycotted  “the municipal bus company on December 5, 1955. African Americans constituted some 70 percent of the ridership, and the absence of their bus fares cut deeply into revenue. The boycott lasted 381 days, and even people outside Montgomery embraced the cause. Protests of segregated restaurants, pools, and other public facilities took place all over the United States. 


As the dignified obstinacy of Mrs. Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, parallel campaigns to end racial injustice within their respective communities spread internationally. 


Twenty thousand South African women marched in Pretoria in 1956 to protest the pass laws. The South African Pass laws required Black South Africans to carry a document called a "dompas" at all times. (A dompas, when translated from Afrikaans, means a "stupid pass"  and was a derogative nickname given to the deplored book to express resentment towards the Apartheid laws.) The dompass confined people of colour to designated areas, severely limiting their ability to live and work in urban areas without permission. It also entitled police to demand that they show their passbook at any time or face arrest.


On January 7, 1957, a bus boycott, prompted by a 20 percent increase in bus fare and frustration toward the Apartheid government, began in Johannesburg and quickly spread throughout the country. Boycotters chanted Azikwelwa – “We will not ride.” The protest lasted nearly six months, and 70,000 South Africans participated until the government relented and instituted a public subsidy, which cancelled the fare increase. 



Photo: Alexandra, Johannesburg bus boycott,1957.


However, the sense of hope inspired by the successful outcome of the bus boycott was short-lived. 

On March 21, 1960, police killed 69 unarmed South Africans who were part of a peaceful Anti-Apartheid protest in Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg. I was born a year later, almost to the day the shooting of peaceful protestors in Sharpeville ushered in a time of unrelenting government violence in my home country towards people of colour.


What fascinates is that the United States and South Africa, countries where women, previously consigned to subordinate roles, brought fresh leadership to the struggle for political freedom and social equality. Pamela E Brooks explores this topic.in her book Boycotts, Buses, and Passes: Black Women's Resistance in the U.S. South and South Africa.


Back to the United States: on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision declaring Montgomery’s segregated bus seating unconstitutional, and a court order to integrate the buses was served on December 20. The boycott ended the following day. For her role in igniting the successful campaign, Parks became known as the “mother of the civil rights movement.” 


The Civil Rights movement of the United States fought to end legalized racial discrimination, segregation, and disenfranchisement from 1954 to 1968. Tragically, this momentous wave of energy died with Martin Luther King Jr on the hotel balcony of the Lorraine Motel.


Rosa Parks was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. When she died in 2005, her body lay in state at the U.S. Capitol, an honour reserved for private citizens who performed a great service for their country. Parks was the first woman and only the second Black person to receive the distinction.” 


I did not take photos of the room Martin Luther King Jr stayed in. It felt intrusive and gawkish. The room is as he left it when he stepped out onto the balcony and was shot dead. However, the intimate space, his simple suitcase and a few possessions, patiently waiting for him to return to live another day, moved me deeply.


With all my heart, I hope the US will continue to honour democracy and human and civil rights and see the value in lifting up all its people.



@NationalCivilRightsMuseum @BlackLivesMatter @Albany Museum @RhodesUniversity


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