How History Takes on Healing Power
Discussing Reparations and Repair at Memphis’ Lorraine Motel
The Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis, just blocks away from Beale Street, the city’s historic African American commercial center, first opened as a whites-only establishment in the 1920s. But just two decades later, when it was bought and repurposed by Black business owners, it went from an institution that banned African American patrons to one that was embraced as a safe haven by those very same travelers seeking dignified lodgings in the Jim Crow South.
People like Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Nat King Cole found hospitality there. So …