Theatrical Thursday: Sweatin' to Showtunes

“THE MOUNTAINTOP” MEMPHIS TRIP SERIES: STAX MUSEUM OF AMERICAN SOUL MUSIC The Stax Museum of American Soul Music is a museum located in Memphis, Tennessee, at 926 East McLemore Avenue, the original location of Stax Records. Stax launched and supported the careers of artists such as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Sam & Dave, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Albert King, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Jean Knight, Mable John, and countless others including spoken word and comedy by Rev. Jesse Jackson, Moms Mabley, and Richard Pryor.

“THE MOUNTAINTOP” MEMPHIS TRIP SERIES: LORRAINE HOTEL The National Civil Rights Museum is a complex of museums and historic buildings built around the former Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2016, the museum was honored by becoming an affiliate museum of the Smithsonian Institution.  Civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. stayed in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in early April 1968, while working to organize protests around the ongoing Memphis sanitation strike. While standing on the balcony outside his room on the evening of April 4, King was suddenly shot once through the neck by an unseen assassin's sniper's bullet. King fell to the ground, bleeding from his head and neck. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, but the wound was fatal. He died at the hospital an hour after the shooting.