Honouring Harold
“Ever walked down a street, looked up, been surprised by what you saw and stopped? That just happened as I caught sight of the Lorraine Motel here in Memphis.”
So I wrote—and Tweeted—after arriving in February 2020 at the appropriately named Arrive Memphis, a new boutique hotel on South Main Street that is helping re-energise this city’s redeveloped south side, characterised by old brick buildings and former factories.
It was Day One of a whirlwind three-day trip to the American South, and I had just spotted the iconic sign of the old Lorraine Motel—site of the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr on that terrible day of April 4, 1968. The building and the sign are now part of The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel.
