In 1974, James Baldwin published the novel If Beale Street Could Talk, a love story set in Harlem in the 1970s but the title of which was drawn from an earlier blues song that referred to Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. The novel is about the bonds of love, especially those within a family and those that form a family. Most importantly, and most typical of Baldwin’s work, the novel illustrates how the bonds of love empower people to battle the kinds of discrimination and prejudice that destroy lives.
And, oh, Beale Street was talking the other night—Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend! People crowded the street, which had been closed off to all but pedestrians. They filled the music halls, the restaurants, the bars. But there was no real need to go inside any of the establishments. The music roared out through the wide-open windows and doors to flood the street as much as the people did.
Along one long block, people stood four and six deep along the sidewalk like they were waiting for a parade. Two young men turned cartwheels the length of the block. Before they started tumbling, the men had to whistle, shrill and loud, and gesture, to keep the bystanders back, to keep them out of harm’s way, so they wouldn’t get hurt as the men flew by. Head over heels, hands down on pavement, head over heels, hands down on pavement, over and over, head over heels, the length of the block. Till they ended, finally, standing upright, to the cheers and applause of the bystanders, to gather in their reward in the form of bills deposited into plastic buckets passed up and down the lines along the sidewalk.
And the music and the people roared together.
A few blocks away from Beale Street, just a short walk, really, stands the National Civil Rights Museum, the nation’s first, established in 1991. It houses a series of exhibits that traces the roots and causes of slavery in the early 1600s to the drive for freedom and the right to vote up to the year 2000, with reference to the election of the first African American to the highest office in the land.
But the literal cornerstone of the National Civil Rights Museum, the building it was erected to tie into, is the Lorraine Motel.
It was at the Lorraine, on April 4, 1968, that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He had come to Memphis for the second time to lend his support to a sanitation workers’ strike that was dragging on with a lot of back and forth but no signs of resolution. When he was there in March of that year, he led a march of 6,000 people. This time, he wanted to hold a second march. Everyone, including the city’s leaders, figured there would be more marchers. That first march led to the death of a 16-year-old. The city was trying to block the march. Heading out for dinner with colleagues, King stepped out onto the hotel balcony and was just outside the door to his room, number 306, leaning over the railing, looking down, when he was shot. The bullet entered through his face and neck. The neck wound appeared the most severe. It bled profusely. He was taken to a nearby hospital but never regained consciousness.
Of course, the night before, King delivered what became his last speech, which became rather famously known as his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech.
Like Moses, he said, he had seen the Promised Land, defined by him as a place where all people but especially black people—because he was speaking to and for an audience of black people—have peace and equal rights. King also said, though, that he might not get to the Promised Land with the people to and for whom he spoke, because he might die first. The museum captures his speech, shows it all, as he delivered it, extemporaneously at the Masonic Temple.
King had to deliver his last speech extemporaneously because he hadn’t planned to give it. The museum shows a short film on a continuous loop about how King wasn’t going to address the group assembled at the Masonic Temple. He and his fellow NAACP leaders thought the crowd would be small and that he should stay in Room 306 and plan for the march they wanted to hold to support the striking workers. King was eager to hear whether a court order had been granted to force the city to allow the march to happen. But when the crowd grew and grew, expecting to hear King, he was called and he came.
One of the ironies of history. No crowd, no phone call, no last speech.
Back on Beale Street, the night after the tumblers went down the street head over heels, people who wanted to go wandering through the music halls or just stand in the street and listen to the bands while sipping on whatever they wanted to sip on, had to first go through a rather daunting safety check. Bold signs said, “No Guns.” Of course, signs never stopped anything. So there were police and public safety officers aplenty, standing by the maze of stanchions through which people had to walk. At the beginning of the maze, people had to show an i.d.—driver’s license or passport. And at the end of the maze, they had to pass through a metal detector. Those who set it off were sidelined and scanned with a hand-held wand. Just like at the airport.
Clearly, there was no way anyone with a gun was going to get through all that.
Turns out, Beale Street itself hasn’t always been called Beale Street. As local legend goes, it was created in 1841 as an avenue but locals began calling it Beale Street to honor the African American blues musician W.C. Handy, who wrote “Beale Street Blues” in 1917. That was the song that inspired James Baldwin to title his novel as he did. But about 1955, Memphis city officials changed the name of all east-west streets to avenues. The entertainer Danny Thomas, who helped found the St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis and each year raised money for it, interceded on the side of the local residents, and even wrote a song, “Bring Back Our Beale Street.” He and the locals prevailed.
Beale Street tumblers; a Civil Rights Museum just blocks away; the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; famous last speeches; a street name changed and then changed back again; an American novel by James Baldwin about the power of love, written by a writer who spent much of his life living outside America—sometimes, maybe even oftentimes, the real power of change and hope lives in irony, juxtaposition, and the loving drive of ordinary people with help from the famous, and a serendipitous turn of events.
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William Miller directed the creative writing program at George Mason University for more than two-dozen years until his retirement in 2018. During that time, he helped establish the Cheuse Center, the Fall for the Book literary festival, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree program in creative writing, and Stillhouse Press. Negotiations to bring the Poetry Daily web-based contemporary poetry distribution program to Mason began in his last year in the director’s position. He serves on the board of Fall for the Book, and is the current board chair of the Cheuse Center.
May 27, 2024