The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- Memories Of A Martyr Vibrant In Memphis

The voice of the Rev. E. Holmes Matthews Jr. boomed off the 103-year-old domed ceiling and bathed his congregation in redemption.

"Do we have depth in our lives?" the pastor bellowed. "Our lives ought to be more than just a shallow, wasted existence."

"Oh yes," shouted one parishioner, awash in the sway of God.

"Amen," echoed another.

But from the rafters of Clayborn-Ball Temple could be heard another refrain, a voice not heard there since 1968, but resonating all the same in its ghostly persistence.

"The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today . . . the cry is always the same: `We want to be free.' "

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke frequently at Clayborn-Ball Temple, 294 Hernando St. in Memphis, Tenn. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was a center of civil rights activities in 1968. The sanctuary was virtually destroyed during riots after King's assassination in Memphis on April 4 of that year.

The church isn't a tourist attraction. Most visitors to this city who are interested in the civil rights movement go instead to the National Civil Rights Museum. But visitors to Memphis can come away with more than memories of Graceland and a bottle of Love Me Tender Shampoo.

Bridge to the past

The old places are being forgotten, to the relief of many who can remember them only with a wince of pain. But the younger generation needs a bridge - like the one that spans the sacred Mississippi - to connect them with their forebears.

To some, 27 years is an interminable time. To others, seeing the old news footage of striking garbage workers filing out of Clayborn-Ball Temple is more immediate. The signs they wore read simply "I AM A MAN."

"I remember hearing him," Pat Taylor said of King. "He was a very friendly man. Basically, his speeches were about the same. They were all about peace, equality, overlooking racism: `Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.' - Matthew 10:16." (It was often quoted by King.)

Taylor, a member of the Clayborn-Ball congregation since 1949, works in public relations for South Central Bell telephone company. She said people often associate another church - Mason Temple - with the slain civil rights leader because King delivered his last, prophetic sermon there the day before he died.

"Each time Dr. King came to Memphis to speak," Taylor said, "Clayborn-Ball is where he spoke, except for the last time when he spoke at Mason Temple."

Mason Temple

Mason Temple, at 930 Mason St., is headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, the largest predominately African American Pentecostal denomination in the U.S. (with churches also in 52 foreign countries). Regular services are no longer held at Mason Temple, but the church is open for touring.

Tours are given by A.B. McEwen, 68, who has been caretaker of the property for the past 54 years. McEwen and the congregation were awaiting Dr. King's arrrival at Mason Temple the night of the assassination. King was to speak at the church that night as well.

"I was the one who announced it from the podium that he got shot," said McEwen. "Fifteen minutes after I announced it, the building was vacant and the parking lot was empty. Everybody had gone over to the Lorraine Motel."

As garbage mounted on Memphis street corners in 1968, the Rev. Melvin Blackburn, then pastor at Clayborn-Ball Temple, opened that church's doors to black sanitation workers who had gone on strike for fair pay and better treatment from the city. The sanitation workers met regularly at the church. King made his final journey to Memphis in support of striking workers.

The unusual thing about Rev. Blackburn, explained Taylor, is that he was a white man preaching to a congregation of about 200 blacks in the racially segregated South.

The riots shook the church's foundation, so much so that the circular balcony had collapsed onto the floor of the massive sanctuary. Since then, the sanctuary has been restored, but the congregation has dwindled. It is on the rise again, with about 72 members, Taylor noted.

Lorraine Motel

A few blocks from the church is the Lorraine Motel, where King was fatally shot on the balcony outside his second-floor room. The motel, at 450 Mulberry St., has been converted into the National Civil Rights Museum. It contains exhibits as well as a march through the civil rights era of the 1950s and '60s in films, displays and photographs.

"It's a healing place," said Andre Miller, an art history student at the University of Memphis, who was touring the museum with his wife. Miller, who is black, said the museum helps people understand that racism is based on fear.

The burned-out hull of a Greyhound bus takes up one section of the museum. The bus carrying black and white "freedom riders" was attacked by a white mob in 1961 outside Anniston, Ala., and destroyed by a firebomb that was hurled through a window. The riders had set out to test a Supreme Court order outlawing segregation in bus terminals.

The final stop in the museum is Room 306, where King stayed the night before he was assassinated. The bullet, fired from a rooming house across the street, blew the knot off his necktie, a placard says.

The room is kept as King left it. The bed is unmade. The front-page headline on a copy of the now-defunct Memphis Press-Scimitar is about the Vietnam War. Outside, on the balcony, is a wreath.

Locals say you can still see faint remnants of blood stains on the concrete outside room 306.

A lone opponent

Although the museum is popular with visitors from around the world, one Memphian has gained notoriety for opposing it.

Jacqueline Smith, 43, who was the last resident of the Lorraine Motel when it was condemned and she was evicted, has lived on the sidewalk across the street from the motel for the last six years. She sleeps on a donated couch, counting the days of her vigil on a sign there.

"It's a tourist trap," said Smith. "People go in there and pay $18 for a T-shirt with Dr. King's face on it and wear it around. That's not what Dr. King would have wanted.

"People are hungry in the houses behind this building. He would want them to be fed. He would want the money to go to the poor."

Rather than buying a T-shirt, Smith, a black woman, urges admirers of the civil rights leader to purchase his books, particularly "A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr."

Beale Street

After a tour of the museum, visitors often head for Beale Street, described in brochures as "the home of W.C. Handy's blues and a spiritual center for black Americans."

The two-block historical section looks more like a spiritual center for college students who couldn't make it to Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Here, however, is a gem that remains pretty much as it has for 100 years. A. Schwab dry goods store was established in 1876 by Abraham Schwab. The oldest establishment on Beale Street is the oldest family-owned general store in the Mid-South.

Immigrants like Schwab filled a niche in the South during the 1870s and 1880s by establishing stores that catered to blacks. At that time, according to sociologist James W. Loewen of the University of Vermont, white Southerners didn't want to sell to blacks. In the late 1800s, Chinese immigrants began opening grocery stores and European immigrants (particularly Jews) established clothing stores in the Mississippi River Delta in what Loewen described as a cultural phenomenon.

"We have over a million items," said Elliott Schwab, great grandson of Abraham Schwab. "If you can't find it at Schwab's, you're better off without it."

The store contains two floors of clothing, kitchen supplies, tools, souvenirs and just about anything else you can imagine. Like archeologists, shoppers dig through piles of goods in search of treasures that will explain the origins of man and foretell his next apocalyptic step. Or maybe they're just looking for a good pair of suspenders.

"I still carry celluloid collars - clergy collars," said Schwab. "I carry about 100 styles of suspenders. I have more straw hats than anybody, period. We lose more stuff around here than people sell. People aren't stealing it. We just misplace it and find it years later. By the time we find it, it's back in style again."

For $18, you can buy a galvanized Maid Rite washboard. For $1.50, you can get a bar of homemade lye soap. In one corner of the store are oils, candles and soaps sold to perform certain wonders. They purport to bring wealth, love or whatever you desire if used as directed.

Voice from the rafters

Three blocks away, on a Sunday morning, Rev. Matthews is wrapping up his sermon.

"A life that yields to our God," he says, "is the only life that's truly rich."

But from the rafters comes that other voice. The words had not been spoken there, but found solace there all the same. They were from King's final sermon at Mason Temple on a stormy night in 1968:

"I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. . . . I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." Bill Bowden is a freelance writer living in Fayetteville, Ark.

IF YOU GO MEMPHIS AND CIVIL RIGHTS ---------------------------------------------------

-- Clayborn-Ball Temple - (901) 527-7283 - is open 8 a.m.- noon weekdays, 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays, and 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Sundays. Tours of the building can be arranged at other times as well, said Rev. Deborah Dennie, who recently replaced the Rev. Matthews as minister at the temple. Sunday School is held at 9 a.m., with church services following at 11 a.m.

-- Mason Temple - (901) 578-3800 - is open for tours 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays and by appointment on Saturdays.

-- The National Civil Rights Museum - (901) 521-9699 - is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday (except for Tuesday, when it's closed) and 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for senior citizens, $3 for children ages 6-12 and free to those younger.

-- A. Schwab dry goods - (901) 523-9782 - is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

-- Heritage Tours (280 Hernando St., Memphis, TN 38126, 901527-3427) offers African-American history tours of Memphis. In addition to the National Civil Rights Museum, Beale Street and the two churches mentioned in the article, the bus tour takes in the downtown Slave Market District and Slavehaven, a house that reportedly served as a way station for runaway slaves. Tours can also be customized to include other sites, such as the boyhood home in Henning, Tenn., of Roots author Alex Haley. Group rates are $20 for adults, $15 for children and $12 for children 12 years old and younger.

-- For more information, contact the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau at (901) 543-5300.