Notes from the Road
The Unfortunate story of the lorraine motel
Once a sanctuary for black travelers, athletes, and musicians recording in Memphis, things took a dark turn on April 4 1968. On that day, while standing on the balcony just outside room 306, Martin Luther King Jr was shot. Hearing the shot the motel owner, Loree Bailey, had a stroke and died a few days later. Her husband, Walter, continued to run the motel though never rented out room 306, preserving it as it was left. In 1982, after declaring bankruptcy, Walter was forced to sell the motel and watch as the once whites-only hotel he and his wife had bought and transformed was turned into a brothel. He died a few years later.
Now the site of the Civil Rights Museum it stands suspended in time, the remains of a tragic story.