Welcome to Memphis

Ed Frank

Memphis, Tennessee, on the Fourth Chickasaw Bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, is the larg est city in the state as well as the economic and cultural capitol of a region of the country whose people have made huge contributions to the development of the modern world.

Someone once quipped that "Memphis is known only for the life of one king and the death of another," and it may well be true that Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King, Jr., are the only people who come readily to most people's minds when the city is mentioned. Most American historians probably know something about the city's rich musical heritage and perhaps can recall a little about Edward Hull "Boss" Crump, but there is much more to Memphis's past.

Laid out in 1819--when it was the gateway to the Old Southwest--Memphis has attracted or produced many remarkable people. Frances Wright began the interracial utopian community of Nashoba east of Memphis in the late 1820s; later, such outspoken and heroic women as Elizabeth Avery Meriwether ("the Confederate suffragist") and Ida B. Wells (the anti-lynching crusader) would work there to extend and secure the rights of women or African-Americans. Better known visitors to the area in the nineteenth-century included Alexis de Tocqueville (a witness to one link in the Trail of Tears), the naturalist John James Audubon, Mark Twain, and Thomas Edison.

In the twentieth century, Memphis and Memphians have been on the cutting edge of the evolving consumer economy. Self-service grocery stores; clean, predictable, and affordable roadside lodging for vacationing families; and worldwide overnight package delivery have all been created or perfected by Memphians--these companies include Holiday Inn, Piggly Wiggly, and Federal Express.

Visitors to Memphis who walk the streets of downtown will find many free-standing and wall-mounted historical plaques that elaborate on these and other incidents and individuals, and might agree that no other American city of its size has produced more remarkable people, or been more culturally influential, than Memphis has.

Ed Frank is associate professor, University Libraries, at the University of Memphis.