Lorraine Motel - Memphis, TN - Infamous Crime Scenes on Waymarking.com

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was in Memphis, Tennessee to support the city’s striking garbage workers. He checked into the Lorraine Motel in the early evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony in front of Room 306 as shot was fired from a rooming house across the street. Dr. King died a short time later at St. Joseph's Hospital. For a number of years following the assassination, the Lorraine Motel remained open. It was finally the victim of foreclosure in 1982 and later that year the Martin Luther King, Jr., foundation purchased the property in hopes of one day building a national museum dedicated to African American civil right. The dream became a reality when construction began on the National Civil Rights Museum in 1987. Construction was completed and the museum opened to the public on September 28, 1991 and was expanded in 2001 to include the Young and Morrow Building which was the former rooming house where James Earl Ray fired the shots that took Dr. King’s life.

Today the National Civil Rights Museum, which was build around the Lorraine Motel, is open to the public every day except Tuesday’s from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with extended hours during the summer. Admission (2009) to the museum is $12.00.

Date of crime: 04/04/1968 Public access allowed: yes Fee required: yes Web site: [Web Link]

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