Look at Beale Street today and its future can seem inevitable. It wasn’t.
A photograph taken at Beale and Second in the early 70’s captures a very different street. Fifty years ago, the famous entertainment district was caught between its celebrated past and an uncertain future.
Beale’s importance to Black business and culture was unquestioned. During the early twentieth century, the street had been home to clubs, restaurants, theaters, stores, professional offices and organizations serving Memphis’s Black community. Its musical legacy eventually became known around the world.
But by the 1960s and 1970s, urban renewal, changing business patterns and decades of disinvestment had taken a heavy toll. Buildings disappeared. Businesses closed. Blocks that had once been crowded with activity became increasingly empty.
By the mid seventies, Memphis leaders were trying to determine what Beale Street should become.
Redevelopment proposals included restoration, new businesses and pedestrian-oriented plans. Preservationists faced a difficult question: how could Memphis revive Beale without destroying the very history that made it important? The answer took years.
Today’s Beale Street—with neon signs, clubs, restaurants, festivals and millions of visitors—emerged from that long and often contentious redevelopment process.
That’s what makes the photograph so valuable.
It freezes Beale Street between two eras.
The legendary street of W.C. Handy and the early blues was fading. The modern entertainment district had not yet arrived.
For one moment in the summer of 1976, Beale Street was simply waiting to discover what came next.