Walking in Memphis

"And they asked me if I would

Do a little number

And I sang with all my might

And she said

"Tell me are you a Christian child?"

And I said "Ma'am I am tonight"

-- Marc Cohn, "Walking in Memphis"

May 10, 2007

Dear Leslie,

In one hand a street preacher carried a placard reading "Ask me why you deserve Hell." In the other was the microphone he used nonstop to answer his own question. "Trust Jesus," his T-shirt read.

Beale Street is probably as close to Sodom and Gomorrah as a fundamentalist Christian might hope to get. It's a tough place to search for righteous people. Memphis tries to contain the mayhem by closing off a few blocks of the street, but alcohol is available from walk-up beer windows, drinkers spill out of B.B. King's Blues Club, Silky O'Sullivan's or Wet Willie's or any number of clubs most of the day and deep into the night, street performers are always there trying to pick up a few bucks in tips and hordes of tourists drop by just to see it all. Standing in the middle of that wild street handing out religious tracts or trying to talk about Jesus with someone drinking a beer takes conviction.

Beale Street was even rowdier than usual Saturday. The annual Beale Street Music Festival was last weekend at nearby Tom Lee Park. More than 100,00 people descended on the park for three days of blues, rock 'n' roll, beer and food. Sixty-three musical acts performed on three huge stages along the Mississippi River.

The big blues tent squatted in the middle, a refuge for people who just wanted to sit and listen to Delta blues, the music Memphis made famous, music with conviction. People like Willie "Big Eyes" Smith and Koko Taylor kept our friend Jack in the tent most of the night.

DC, some other friends and I listened to Iggy & the Stooges, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Allman Brothers Band and Gov't Mule on Friday night. Iggy Pop was a punk rocker before punk rock. He's 60 years old now and still careens around the stage shirtless in skintight jeans screaming "I'm fried." He means it, too.

Saturday morning DC, Jack and I went to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. The room he stayed in looks like it did that April day. The bus Rosa Parks wouldn't take a backseat in is inside the museum along with many photographs from civil rights protests.

One of the most powerful was taken in Birmingham. A white policeman uses a police dog like a weapon against a black demonstrator. As the dog's teeth tear into the front of the man's right thigh, no glimmer of fear shows on his face. He offered himself up in the name of justice. That's conviction.

Near the museum exit was a quote by Gandhi, whose belief in nonviolence inspired King. He said: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

Most people walked right on by the street preacher in the middle of Beale Street. A teenaged girl with tattoos on her bare shoulders didn't. They talked eye to eye for a couple of minutes. Finally he announced over the microphone that she was doomed to spend eternity in hell.

The astonishment and dismay that washed over her face just as quickly gave way to a smile, "I'm in high school," she said, walking away.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.