Kamala Harris on Thursday paid a go to to the historic Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. The previous Vice President, who additionally toured the Nationwide Civil Rights Museum within the Tennessee metropolis, was on the town for a cease on her “107 Days” guide tour.
On what satirically occurred to be Dr. King’s birthday, Harris took a while to go to the precise location the place MLK was fatally shot by James Earl Ray almost six a long time in the past. {A photograph} of the second captured by The Business Attraction exhibits the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee having a second of solitude as she surveyed the realm and touched the railing of the storied balcony, the place King was shot within the neck simply outdoors of his motel room. On that day in historical past, April 4, 1968, King was in Memphis organizing protests throughout the ongoing sanitation strike.
A supply near Harris advised theGrio that it was the previous Vice President’s first go to to the MLK assassination web site on the Lorraine Motel, which was designated a historic web site in 1982 and finally turned a part of the Nationwide Civil Rights Museum complicated. The Harris supply stated the potential 2028 presidential candidate toured the museum for 45 minutes.
The personal tour was led by Russ Wigginton, the museum’s president, and Ryan Jones, the director of historical past, interpretation, and curatorial providers. Harris considered exhibitions spanning 5 centuries of Black historical past, from resistance throughout slavery and the Civil Battle and Reconstruction, to the rise of Jim Crow, and the pivotal Civil Rights period that led to breakthrough change for Black Individuals, together with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and their political energy.
MVP @KamalaHarris visited the Nationwide Civil Rights Museum on the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN earlier immediately.
📸: Chris Day pic.twitter.com/M4bOUt2Obh
— better of kamala harris (@archivekamala) January 16, 2026
A Harris supply shared that, throughout the tour, Harris requested Jones what he thought Dr. King’s message can be immediately.
Acknowledging the importance of visiting the museum on MLK’s birthday, now a federal vacation noticed on each third Monday of January, Harris advised museum staffers, “It’s by perhaps divine plan, however actually by coincidence, that we occur to be in Memphis on immediately.”
“However the work you all are doing right here is so critically essential in a second the place folks have to see mild within the midst of darkness, when folks want to recollect our historical past,” she advised the museum employees. Harris continued, “To problem us about what we’re purported to do, in the meanwhile in time through which we exist, dealing with obstacles and challenges, but additionally full of hope and optimism and struggle. Sure, it’s so essential that folks have a spot to come back, in order that whereas we keep in mind historical past and whereas we stock it in our hearts, we are able to additionally really feel it and see it and expertise it in a approach that rejuvenates us.”
Hinting however not naming President Donald Trump’s efforts to sanitize and undermine Black historical past, the historic first Black and feminine vice chairman stated the position of museums just like the Nationwide Civil Rights Museum is crucial. “Particularly at this second in time, the place we have to remind folks of our true historical past in a approach that provides us a collective sense of satisfaction and who we’re as Individuals,” stated Harris.
