The Lorraine Motel

The Lorraine Motel is a Tennessee historical marker in Shelby County.

Shelby Co, Memphis, southeast corner of Butler & Mulberry

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Originally the Windsor Hotel (c. 1925) and later one of only a few hotels for blacks, it hosted such entertainers as Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Count Basie, B.B. King, and Nat King Cole. Walter and Loree Bailey bought it in 1942, renaming it the Lorraine. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated outside Room 306 on April 4, 1968, making it a symbol for the civil rights movement. In 1982, a local nonprofit group saved the site from foreclosure for use as America’s first civil rights museum.

TodayHistorical map

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USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection

Historical maps covering this location

1909 · Arkansas. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1916 · Memphis, Tennessee (USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection)
1925 · Memphis, Tennessee (USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection)
1927 · Memphis, Tennessee (USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection)
1939 · Memphis, Tennessee (USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection)

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Marker text and location from the Tennessee Historical Commission, as the Commission publishes them on its marker map.

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