The Lorraine Motel

There are certain photos that seem to exist in your consciousness. You can’t even remember the first time you saw it. You have no memory of NOT knowing about this photo. There was probably some lesson in grade school where you were shown the photo, but it really just feels like the photo exists in you, organically. This is one of those photos:

I could probably draw it from memory.

The eerie thing about the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, which is in the Lorraine Motel, is that it is right in the middle of everything. If you didn’t know what it was, you wouldn’t look at it twice, although it is odd, in this day and age, to see a motel like this in the middle of a city, with its own parking lot. That’s the only thing that is odd about it. But other than that, it is tucked behind Main Street, on its own road, and you get glimpses of it as you walk by, a part of the neighborhood, a spot where this awful thing took place. But it’s not set apart, not really. There is a big parking lot over to the side, but that is hidden away behind buildings. The Lorraine Motel is as it was on that day.

We went to the Motel after our afternoon in Overton Park. I have no GPS so Jen had painstakingly Google-Mapped us within an inch of our lives early at the hotel. We had our day planned. We had four things we wanted to do. Jen Google-Mapped us from one place to the next to the next. Like I said: Girl loves maps. Girl is brilliant with maps. By the end of our stay, we felt like we knew Memphis a little bit better, and we knew which ones were the main roads, and which would get us to the highway, and we knew the lay of the land a little bit better. But on that first day, we really had no idea where we were, and were glued to our maps. There are a couple of diagonal streets leading up to the Lorraine Motel, and we got confused. We were actually coming in on it from the back, so we couldn’t see the front of the motel, which – as I mentioned at the get-go – is instantly recognizable, a place already in my consciousness. But we were driving along Second, I think it was – peering at street signs – feeling like we were lost. But then we saw our first sign for the National Civil Rights Museum. We took a right into the big parking lot – and there, suddenly, was the entire Lorraine Motel. The big sign at the corner of the parking lot. The sign on the side of the hotel. And then the motel itself, the stretch of doors, two stories, and the balcony, and the light green doors and warm-colored brick.

Instantly recognizable. A wave of emotion crashed over me just at the sight of it. And Jen burst into tears. We were still driving at that point, but we knew we were there. We parked. There was a car beside us with New York plates. I just couldn’t believe how much it looked like my image of it in my head, from all the pictures I have seen of that assassination day. We got out of the car and stared at the hotel. It was getting to be afternoon and the shadows were really long, making the hotel glow a little bit in the light. It was quiet.

The big Lorraine Motel sign at the corner of the lot was from another time, another world.

It’s so jolly-looking, flashy-colors and outrageous corners and shapes, almost like it was for an amusement park. I am so glad everything is preserved just as it was. It’s tucked away off of Main Street. You walk around and you actually feel like it’s a hotel you’re going to spend the night in. The Civil Rights Museum has been built off to the side, where part of the hotel (that you see in the picture above) has been removed (beyond the cars). But the motel itself remains. The doors are closed. There is a wreath on the balcony where the assassination took place. And below, are two gleaming cars, a ’59 Dodge Royal with big green tail fins (license plate ‘EX-8074’) and a ’68 Cadillac (license plate ‘II-1598’). . They are replicas of the cars that were parked there on that day. If you ignored the fact that you have an iPhone in your purse, and an iPod in the car, looking at that small tableau, of the cars and the motel, you would think you were in another era.

There were a couple of other people wandering around, but there weren’t throngs. Jen and I walked around, quietly, taking pictures, reading the plaque, and staring up at the motel windows.

This thing happened there.

The place has been preserved, just as it was.

It was a quiet afternoon with long shadows and warm light. It is a place of ghosts. You could feel them. You could feel the sadness embedded in those warm bricks. The American tragedy that took place there.

I was overwhelmed just by standing there. Because of the lack of tourists, the quiet was eloquent, deafening actually. I entered that picture above. The ghosts are still there.