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Mason Temple
930 Mason St, Memphis,
TN ,
USA
Latitude & Longitude:
35° 7' 17.523264",
-90° 2' 56.790816"
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Tennessee State
Historical Marker
Listed in the National Register of Historic Places |
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Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his prophetic Mountaintop speech in this church
in Memphis, Tennessee, on the eve of his assassination--April 3, 1968.
Mason Temple served as a focal point of civil rights activities in Memphis
during the 1950s and 1960s. Mason Temple was built between 1940 and 1945 as
the administrative and spiritual center of the Church of God in Christ, the
second largest black denomination.
On the evening of April 3, 1968, Mason Temple had scheduled the Southern
Christian Leadership Conferences (SCLC) Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Kings associate,
as the evening speaker, but when the 3,000 person crowd demanded to hear King,
Abernathy phoned King at his room in the Lorraine Hotel and asked him to address
the assembly.
King, Abernathy, Andrew Young and other black leaders had come to Memphis
to support 1,300 striking sanitation workers who met regularly at the church.
Mason Temple was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 10, 1992.
Last updated: 2/14/2015 15:17:00 |
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Mason Temple Historical Marker Location Map, Memphis, Tennessee Map
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