18 of the best free things to do in Memphis

26.02.2024 - 18:00 / lonelyplanet.com / Martin Luther King-Junior

Walk the streets of Memphis and you can almost feel the bones of this mid-size city rise up from the pavement. There’s a reason this place has an outsized impact on American culture.

It was from Memphis that the first echoes of rock n’ roll radiated out across the southern airwaves before going on to change the world. Decades earlier, it was in Memphis that the Delta Blues began to migrate north towards a date with electricity and destiny in Chicago.

And it was in Memphis that the sounds of Stax Records helped define the Civil Rights era, putting out hits with a frequency and quality rivaled only by Motown. The city has been a diamond in the rough for blue-collar tourists for generations, and though the seeds of gentrification are taking the edges off of some of its gritty areas, Bluff City remains one of the best bang-for-your-buck cities in the country. 

With no shortage of American history tugging at their seams, here are the best free activities you can enjoy in Memphis.

Music may dominate the identity of Memphis, but the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr’s final days looms large over the city. I AM A MAN Plaza opened in 2018, one day after the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination on a Bluff City balcony in 1968.

The plaza features a memorial to King and other heroes of the Civil Rights movement and is located within walking distance of Beale St. Look for it on the south side of Clayborn Temple, an enormous church – now partially abandoned – that served as a rallying point for the sanitation strikes that brought King to Memphis during that fateful week.

No visit to Memphis is complete without a tour of the National Civil Rights Museum, located off South Main St at the Lorraine Motel.

The museum charges admission, but those traveling on a budget or passing through after hours can visit the plaza for free and pay their respects to Dr King in front of the balcony where he spent his final moments. A wreath permanently marks the place he was standing when an assassin’s bullet took his life.

Visitors to Beale St don’t have to spend a dime to soak in live music at Handy Park. This plaza at the eastern end of Beale is named for WC Handy, an early-20th-century composer dubbed “Father of the Blues.” Long before six strings and electricity defined the sound of the blues we know today, Handy’s trumpet reverberated around Beale St’s clubs in a 12-bar blues that became a cornerstone of modern music.

A century after Handy was topping the charts, modern blues bands play beside his statue on weekend nights.

The 640,000-sq-ft behemoth Sears Crosstown building, in Midtown, now known as the Crosstown Concourse, was built in 1927 and in its heyday it shipped products of all shapes, sizes and functions to thousands of people