Memphis Part II: Museums of Memphis
Having taken a trolley ride around Memphis the previous day to reconnoiter, we headed back into town to visit the Mississippi River Museum at Mud Island River Park.
Mud
Island is located next to the eastern bank of the Mississippi right at
the Memphis waterfront. The island began forming in the early 1900s as
the Mississippi deposited sand and silt. Over the years, squatters
occasionally farmed the island, but it was sometimes covered by high
water. In 1958, a large section of the western side of the island was
removed for the construction of the bridge for I-40, and the soil was
placed on the northern end of the island raising it above flood stage.
Construction of Mud Island River Park began in 1977. The park opened in
1982 and is a showplace of the life and culture of the lower
Mississippi. The park has a museum, canoe and kayak rentals, picnic areas, an amphitheater, and hiking trails.
There
is a Swiss-made monorail that runs over to Mud Island; but,
unfortunately, it was out of service the day we went there. We walked
1/3 of a mile over the elevated walkway to the island. This gave us a
good view of the marina with the Pyramid Arena in the background. Memphis is to the right and Mud Island is to the left. The main channel of the Mississippi is to the left beyond Mud Island.
It
was interesting to see how they have accommodated the frequent changes
in river level. In the photo above, you can see the marina and
docks are moored to very tall, metal pilings. This allows the docks to
rise and fall with the level of the river. The smaller dock to the
right, which is the fuel depot, is attached to the tracks on the bank.
The tracks not only allow the dock to rise and fall, but they also
allow the dock to move laterally as the river widens as it rises.
Mud
Island River Park also has a topographical map representing 1,000 miles of
the lower Mississippi River from Cairo, IL, all the way to the Gulf of
Mexico. The map is called the Mississippi Riverwalk. The photo below shows a small section of the map from the overhead walkway.
The map has a horizontal scale of 30 inches (one step) equal to a mile and is one-half mile long. A
mosaic of 1,746 precast concrete panels each weighing 5 tons makes up the map.
An
average of 1.3 million gallons of water flows through the system,
including the large pool at the end representing the Gulf of Mexico. There are street maps of all the major cities and communities along the river.
We were
fascinated by the map and walked nearly the entire length. There are
plaques with descriptions of memorable people, places, or events along
that particular section of river.
There
are several places where major tributaries join the Mississippi. These
are symbolized by large panels indicating the area drained by the
tributary. In the photo below, Margery is standing in front of panel
showing the 160,500 square mile watershed area of the Arkansas and
White Rivers.
The Mississippi River Museum is adjacent to the Riverwalk. The museum starts with the history of the Native Americans who populated
the lower Mississippi valley starting with the Paleo-Indians about
10,000 years ago. These people probably hunted mastodons and smaller
game.
The
area was explored by the Spanish in the 1500s and by the French in the
1600s. The United States acquired the area to the west of the
Mississippi with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 during the presidency
of Thomas Jefferson.
Indians
controlled the much of the lower Mississippi even after the settlement
of St. Louis and New Orleans. After the invention of the cotton gin in
1793, however, the demand for cotton rose sharply; and there was an
increase in the need for more land to grow cotton. In 1818, a series of
treaties with the Indians paved the way for the settlement of western
Kentucky and Tennessee and eastern Arkansas. The town of Memphis was
laid out in 1819; and, although the growth was slowed by yellow fever,
malaria, and smallpox, the favorable location of the city attracted
increasingly larger numbers of settlers. By the mid 1800s, Memphis had
5,000 immigrant settlers of mostly German and Irish descent which really surprised us.
The
Mississippi obviously played a huge role in the history of Memphis. The museum traces the history of river transportation from Indian canoes,
to log rafts, to flat boats and keel boats, to the great Mississippi
River steam boat era. The photo below shows numerous steamboat whistles
with a model of the famed steamboat the Robert E. Lee in the background. The Robert E. Lee was built in 1866 in New Albany, IN. It is best known for beating the steamboat Natchez IV in a race from St. Louis to New Orleans in 1870. The Robert E. Lee covered the 1,154 mile distance in 3 days, 18 hours, and 14 minutes. To date, no commercial vessel has ever beaten this time.
Over
6,000 riverboats were built for service on the Mississippi and its
tributaries from 1820 through 1880. Most were built along the Ohio
River in Louisville, Cincinnati, and our old hometown of Pittsburgh.
The photo below shows a steamboat paddle wheel and several riverboat engines from a 1920-era steam engine to a 1950s diesel.
There
was also an important Civil War battle on the Mississippi River just
above Memphis which resulted in the Union Army capturing the city. The museum includes information on the men, boats, and equipment from both
sides. The conflict comes alive with a simulated battle between a
Confederate shore battery and a Union ironclad gunboat.
The museum also covers Memphis' rich musical history. Memphis claims to be
the birthplace of both the Blues and of Rock 'n' Roll. The Blues
started with slaves in the field and evolved from "field hollers" and
slave chants. These were sometimes an expression of an emotion and
sometimes were a way of communicating. Many times, the hollers
contained secret messages to fellow slaves. In the '20s
and '30s, Blues artists performed on Beale Street, the main
entertainment area in Memphis at the time.
Following WWII, new forms of
the Blues evolved with the advent of electric instruments. New rhythms
combined with the electric instruments led to early forms of Rock 'n'
Roll by artists like Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, and Jerry
Lee Lewis.
And,
of course, you can't mention Memphis without thinking of Elvis. Elvis
began his music career in the early '50s and was a huge influence on
Rock 'n' Roll even after his death. We checked into visiting Graceland
while we were in Memphis, but we thought the admission price was quite
high at $27 for the basic admission (the price goes all the way to $69
for the VIP Tour that includes his planes and cars). Since we aren't
big Elvis fans to begin with, we decided to pass on touring Graceland.
After Mud Island, we could see the skies darkening so we called it a day and headed back to the motor home. Shortly after we got back, the rains came. We had seen the outer bands of rain from
hurricane Gustav lurking to our southwest on radar before we left in
the morning, and the winds had kicked up the night before. The rain started fairly hard, then tapered to a steady, all-night rain.
The
next morning, there was a forecast of a 100% chance of rain so we
decided some more indoor activities were in order. We headed out to a couple
of other museums we wanted to see. The first stop was the Cotton Museum
at the Memphis Cotton Exchange.
The exchange was founded in 1874 as a
result of the growing cotton market in Memphis. In 1922, the exchange
moved to its current location at the corner of Front St. and Union
Ave., which was the center of cotton trading activity in the city.
The
first evidence of cotton being woven into fabric is from Pakistan
sometime between 2300 and 1750 BC. It was grown in Egypt in the first
century AD, and Spain became the cotton-growing center by 950 AD. The
name comes from the Arabic word "qutun" or "qutn."
Colonists
planted cotton in Virginia in the early 1600s, and it soon became a
primary crop in the South. Cotton planting fell during the Civil War,
but rebounded afterward with sharecroppers doing the bulk of the
planting.
The
exchange established rules and regulations for cotton grading, pricing,
and trading. Trading was done on the first floor and was open to
members only. In 1978, the trading floor was closed in favor of
computer trading. The historic trading floor now houses the Cotton
Museum.
The
centerpiece of the trading floor was the large blackboard where members
could keep track of changing prices. Today, the blackboard remains as
part of the display. Life-like mannequins illustrate how the board was used.
Cotton
grading was done on the top floors of buildings along Front St. under
north-facing skylights. Until a special light was developed in the
1950s, cotton could not be graded on cloudy days or at night. The
museum had a display showing how cotton was graded according to staple
(fiber) length, color, and the amount of foreign inclusions.
Cotton
was at the center of the economy in the South, and it was at the center
of society as well. In 1931, the Memphis Cotton Carnival was organized
to promote the wearing of cotton fabric and to help counteract the
effects of the Great depression on the cotton industry. Societies were
formed to host elegant parties. Today, the event is known as Carnival Memphis,
and has been reorganized to include community outreach projects.
Margery is checking out some of the gowns worn by past carnival queens.
From the Cotton Museum, we went several blocks farther south to the National Civil Rights Museum.
On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated as he
stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis. The
aftershock of the assassination would plunge the motel, as well as much
of the city, into a decline. In 1982, a group of citizens who were
concerned the historic site would be lost, formed a foundation and
bought the motel at auction when the property was foreclosed. With
city, county, and state support, the National Civil Rights Museum
opened its doors in 1991.
A
portion of the original motel has been preserved to look the way it did
back in 1968, including two cars outside with 1968 license plates. Room 206,
where Dr. King stayed, can be viewed from inside the museum and is set
up to look the way it did on the morning of April 4. Unfortunately,
photography is not permitted inside the museum, so the outside is the
best we could do. The wreath in the photo below commemorates the spot where Dr. King stood when he was shot.
Inside,
the museum uses primarily old photos to trace the stories of the brave men and women
who fought against segregation and discrimination throughout history.
Visitors can read stories about people like Nat Turner, Dred Scott,
Harriet Tubman, and Fredrick Douglass. You can also learn about
ordinary people like Rosa Parks who just decided she wasn't going to
give up her seat on that bus that day in Montgomery. We learned about
the sit-ins, boycotts, and marches that eventually led to better
education and more equality. Our country has come a long way, but there
is still more to do.
After
the
Civil Rights Museum, we headed back to the motor home. It had
rained rather gently off and on all day, but by evening the rain was
steady and harder. By the next morning, hurricane Gustav
had finally dissipated enough that
the rain let up. It was still cloudy and windy so we made a
quick trip to Wal-Mart, then hung around the motor home the rest of
the day.
There is still more to see and do in Memphis. Check back in a few days to see what else we found.
