Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis campaigning for the rights of striking sanitation workers at the time of his death.
From VOA Learning English, welcome to This Is America.
I’m Avi Arditti.
And I’m Kelly Jean Kelly.
This week, learn about a city in the South that helped give the world many kinds of American music.
Come with us to Memphis, Tennessee...
A Future President and a New City
A future president of the United States helped build Memphis. Andrew Jackson and two other men settled the city in 1819. They chose the place where the Wolf River flowed into the Mississippi River. Jackson named the community after the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis on the Nile River.
The Memphis of modern America is the biggest city in the state of Tennessee. More than one million people live in the Memphis area. Six hundred fifty thousand of them live in the city. Memphis is a center of business, industry and transportation.
Memphis grew when a railroad bridge across the Mississippi River was completed in 1892. The bridge increased trade, and by 1900 it made Memphis the world’s largest market for cotton and wood products.
Southern Culture, Southern Literature
Visitors can learn about the city through its literature. Almost 100 years ago, the African-American writer Richard Wright wrote his first stories while working as a dishwasher in Memphis. His book -- called “Native Son” -- was published in 1941. It was a huge success. It strongly influenced public opinion about race issues and created acceptance for other African-American writers.
Peter Taylor’s book “Summons to Memphis” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1985. The Tennessee writer explores how white middle and upper class southerners responded to changes in southern culture in the last century.
The playwright Tennessee Williams examined some of the same social issues in his play “The Glass Menagerie.” In the play, a young woman named Laura has a collection of glass animals. She is a shy person and mostly stays home by herself. One day, her brother brings home a friend from work.
“Is there something you’re more interested in than anything else?
“I do have my glass collection.”
“Glass? What kind is it?”
“Just ornaments. Animals mostly.”
“Oh.”
“Here’s an example of one if you’d like to see it.”
“Sure. Well.”
“Be careful, if you breathe it breaks.”
“I better not touch it then. I’m awful clumsy with things.”
“Well, I trust you with it.”
The Birth of the Blues, The Death of a Civil Rights Leader
Close to the Mississippi River and just south of the center of town is Beale Street, one of the most famous streets in America. W.C. Handy worked on Beale Street as a musician in the early 1900s. The African-American composer is known as the “Father of the Blues.”
In 1916, W.C. Handy wrote a song about the famous street. Here is Louis Armstrong singing “Beale Street Blues.”
More than 60 percent of the people in the city of Memphis are black. Memphis is home to the National Civil Rights Museum. Visitors learn about the history of the American civil rights movement. The museum buildings include the place where Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered.
On April 4, 1968, a white man named James Earl Ray shot the civil rights leader. Martin Luther King was in Memphis to support waste collection workers on strike against the city. Most of the striking workers were black.
In 1991, voters in Memphis elected the first black mayor of the city. The National Civil Rights Museum opened that same year.
Also in 1991, the famed blues singer and guitarist B.B. King opened his own blues club on Beale Street.