"People Make Choices" - Memphis, Tennessee

 

 "People Make Choices"

-Rolando Chang Barrero, USA Tour #5 

Some places are visited. Others are experienced. Today was the latter. 

I left my Harvest Host stay at Doggone RV in Palestine, Arkansas, before sunrise and headed east to Memphis, Tennessee, determined to visit one of the most significant places in the history of the American Civil Rights Movement—the National Civil Rights Museum, built around the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

From the moment I stepped onto the grounds, I knew this would not be an ordinary museum visit.

The museum does far more than recount historical events. It takes visitors on a powerful journey through centuries of slavery, segregation, racial violence, and the long struggle for equality and justice. Walking through the exhibits, reading the firsthand accounts, seeing the photographs, hearing the voices, and eventually standing outside Room 306—where Dr. King spent the final hours of his life—was profoundly moving.

It is impossible to stand there without feeling the weight of history.

It is equally impossible not to wonder how a nation built upon ideals of liberty and equality could so often fail to extend those promises to all of its people.

After leaving the museum, I visited Clayborn Temple, where the famous "I AM A MAN" sculpture and memorial commemorate the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike. Those simple four words became one of the defining declarations of the Civil Rights Movement—not asking for privilege or special treatment, but simply affirming basic human dignity.

Nearby, I also spent time with the nonprofit Facing History & Ourselves, whose work challenges visitors to examine prejudice, civic responsibility, and the moral choices individuals make in times of injustice.

It was there that I encountered a quote that stopped me in my tracks:

"People make choices. Choices make history."

Lorraine Motel- Assassination site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I must have stood there reading those words several times.

Throughout the rest of the day, they echoed in my mind.

What choices am I making today?

What choices are Americans making today?

What choices are our leaders making today?

And perhaps the most unsettling question of all:

How will today's choices shape the history that future generations inherit?

History often feels distant until you stand in the places where it happened. Then you realize that history isn't something that simply occurred long ago.

History is created every day.

By ordinary people making ordinary decisions.

Some of those decisions inspire courage, compassion, and progress.

Others leave scars that endure for generations.

As I continued my drive toward Alabama, I realized that today's visit wasn't really about looking backward.

It was about looking forward.

Because one day, someone will walk through a museum dedicated to our own time.

They will examine our words, our actions, our silence, and our courage.

And they will ask a question that is impossible to escape:

What choices did they make?

And those choices—just like those made by generations before us—will become history.