IU students travel to Memphis to experience the life and legacy of King

Time will be forever frozen in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. spent his final moments of life on April 4, 1968. \nThe room is preserved down to the cheap paintings hanging on the wall, and visitors can look in through a transparent glass casing.\nThe motel became the National Civil Rights Museum after King's death, and its exhibits create a timeline of the African-American struggle for equal rights.\nAs visitors make their way toward King's room, a television set tucked away in the corner relives his final moments through the eyes of a colleague. \nYou almost miss it. \nThe day of his death, King and his followers awaited a federal court decision regarding whether Memphis, Tenn., could block a planned protest march by its sanitation workers. \nAt about 5 p.m., King's aide Andrew Young entered Room 306 with the good news that the march would proceed. \nThe victory thrilled King. He grabbed Young, threw him down on the bed and started beating him with a pillow. \n"He was like a big kid," Young remembered. "It was like, you know, after you make a touchdown. Everyone piles on everybody. People started throwing pillows and piling on and laughing."\nAfterward, King stepped outside on the balcony, and that's when a shot fired from across the street ripped into his jaw. "I frankly thought a car had backfired, and he was still clowning," Young said.\nA group of 50 IU students traveled by bus to visit the Memphis museum Saturday and Sunday. They experienced the history lessons of the Civil Rights Movement, ate ribs and soul food on Beale Street and joined the congregation of Rev. Al Green's Full Gospel Tabernacle for Sunday morning services (Green was away for a meeting about the Grammy Awards). \nIf you're ever in Memphis, go south on Elvis Presley Boulevard past Graceland and turn left on Hale Road. Green's church is on the left. Inside, church elders sit in a row of high-backed brown leather chairs behind the pulpit. Bishop A.E. Reed is their senior at 92 years old. Bishop George Valentine, wearing large sunglasses, shuffles his feet and shakes his fingertips in the air to the hot, boogie-woogie sounds of the organ. Rev. Whiting, barely pausing to breathe, quotes 43 scriptures in just 15 minutes.\nCalls of "hallelujah" and "thank you, Jesus" rise to the ceiling.\nAt nightfall, rhythm and blues music blares out of the doors of the clubs into Beale Street. Dr. Feelgood Potts blows his harmonica. The Masqueraders sing in four-part harmony, and only a full rack of ribs from the Beale Street Blues Cafe warms the cold Memphis air. \nFreshman Bernique Joanes, who said she never really does much on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, was glad she went on the trip.\nOne of the important lessons she learned was the power of one. Instead of complaining about their problems, she said, King taught people to solve them. "You have to be brave enough to stand up and take action and get things done," she said. \nKing stands for different things to different people, and for freshman Tenia Sheppard, he stands for service to others. She said volunteering is important for uniting communities. \n"When you help somebody, it effects both them and you," she said.\nThe IU group spent about four hours at the museum Saturday afternoon. They traveled back to 1955 and sat down next to Rosa Parks in a replica of a Montgomery bus. They heard hopeful speeches by John F. Kennedy Jr., and they entered the Greensboro diner where four black students dared to sit at an all-white lunch counter. \nAlmost everyone seemed to walk away as changed people after seeing Room 306.\n"It helped me to see not the legend but the man," said graduate student Enyonam Hargett. "We're all mortal people. So was he. He was a regular person who had these enormous gifts." \nAs senior Margie Conely stood close to where King fell, she said she was overwhelmed by the closeness of history. \n"I just stood there for probably seven minutes and thought about all the positives and negatives of King's life and what his influence was on America," she said. "Standing in that spot was really emotional." \n-- Contact General Assignments Editor Adam VanOsdol at avanosdo@indiana.edu.