On the night of April 4, 1968 I walked into the kitchen of my family’s Brooklyn apartment and joined my mother as she sat in front of a black & white TV with tears in her eyes. Together we watched the a news broadcast about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

What’s remarkable about Memphis today is that it has embraced its crucial role in American history and made it accessible for us today and for generations to come. I’ve made two recent trips down there: one was for business, where I got a chance to roam around; and the other was a birthday present to my 73 year old mother. I felt Memphis was so much a part of African-American, and of our family’s history, that it would be sweet to share a tour around town with us. As a bonus my 20 year old niece, Amber, came along, making it three generations of my family that would walk through Memphis.

I took my mother and niece to the National Civil Rights Museum, which is partially located in the Lorraine Motel, where King was shot, and partially …

Join BlackAtlas.com Travel Expert-at-Large Nelson George as he takes you on a very personal trip to Memphis.

The beauty of Memphis for visitors is that the city has done an admirable job of institutionalizing its past. You can go to Graceland if you like (I kinda feel about Elvis the same as Chuck D), but there is more than enough black themed culture to keep you busy.

One of the first things I did in Memphis was sit down by the Mississippi River. If you did not grow up in an area adjacent to the Mississippi, it’s a real treat to sit down on one of the many benches that overlook the mighty river and take in its his size and power. The Mississippi was, for most of our nation’s history, the heartbeat of America, moving people and cargo North and South. For much of the 20th century Memphis was a black Mecca that brought folks up from the farms of the deep South to opportunities of this city and so many of those folks traveled by boat.

Just a few blocks from the Mississippi is Beale Street, which was once the spiritual home of black Memphis, a place full of businesses, restaurants and nightlife. In the ‘60s urban renewal brought …