I'd never even heard of the National Civil Rights Museum before, but it made sense. Memphis was the city where Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was also the host city for the National Conference for Media Reform which drew upwards of 3,500 journalists and activists to one of America's poorest cities January 12-14.
Memphis is so poor, in fact, that their bus service stops running at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday nights. (even though, strangely, their trolleys run until 1 a.m.) The homeless shelters also charge admission - a minimum of $7 a night.
So on Saturday, after running around Behle Street with Justin Jeffre - of the band 98 Degrees and now a media activist - I decided the easiest way to return to the Emmanuel Catholic Worker House in Midtown, where I was staying, was to hitch a ride.
My ride turned out to be Memphis Circuit Court Judge D'Army Bailey, who was also attending the conference and described himself as "having done some activist work in the '60s." The judge dropped me off and I didn't figure on seeing him again.
I only found out about the museum the next day, on my way back to the airport. The Seattle-based artist I was hitching with wanted to see it before his flight. We drove through miles of urban blight trying to find it and, when we finally got to the address, we came to a run down hotel, painted hospital-scrub green, that looked like it was from the 1960's. Which, of course, it was.
"Holy God," I exclaimed. "This is where King was shot. They kept the whole thing intact."
And there, on the balcony, standing over a blood stain almost four decades old, in front of room 306, behind the wreath marking King's last place on earth, was Judge Bailey being interviewed by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman.
Anyway, that's how I got that photo that went with my story.
- Stephen Carter-Novotni
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