Lush wilderness covered the Mississippi River bluffs (now known as the Memphis metropolitan area) when Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto encountered the area's Chickasaw inhabitants in 1541. In 1673, French explorers Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette explored the region, called the Fourth Chickasaw Bluffs, which in 1682 was claimed for France by Robert Cavelier de La Salle as part of the vast Louisiana Territory. The French established Fort Assumption at the Fourth Chickasaw Bluffs in 1739. As ownership of the region was disputed by various nations, Fort Assumption was followed by the Spanish Fort San Fernando, built on the site in 1795, and the American Fort Adams, erected in 1797. The Chickasaw ceded West Tennessee to the United States in 1818, and the following year John Overton, James Winchester, and Andrew Jackson founded a settlement on the Mississippi River bluffs that they named Memphis, after an ancient Egyptian city on the Nile River.
Irish, Scots-Irish, Scottish Highlanders, and German immigrants joined westward-advancing pioneers from the eastern United States in settling the new town, which was incorporated in 1826. They served as gunsmiths and blacksmiths and operated saw mills, cotton mills, and cotton warehouses. The economy of the region was based primarily on the cotton industry, which utilized slave labor, and Memphis became the largest slave market in the mid-South. The necessity of transporting cotton to the marketplace made Memphis the focus of transportation improvements. The Memphis-to-New Orleans steamship line was established on the Mississippi River in 1834; six miles of railroad had been constructed around Memphis by 1842; and four major roads were carved out in the 1850s. In 1857 the Memphis-to-Charleston railroad line linked the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Coast. From 1850 to 1860 Memphis's population more than quintupled, swelling to 33,000 people.
When the economic and social differences between northern and southern states that led Tennessee to secede from the United States and join the Confederacy erupted in war, Memphis served temporarily as Tennessee's state capital. But in 1862 a Confederate fleet near Memphis was defeated by Union forces, which then captured Memphis. At the conflict's conclusion, Tennessee was the first state to rejoin the Union and the following year, in 1867, Memphis was made Shelby County seat. A series of yellow fever epidemics in the 1870s ravaged the city, leaving it deserted and bankrupt; in 1879 its charter was revoked.
Subsequent improvements to the city's sewage and drinking water systems helped reduce the threat of epidemic, trade resumed in Memphis, and its population mounted to almost 65,000 by 1890. The first railroad bridge across the Mississippi south of St. Louis opened in Memphis in 1892, increasing the city's trade opportunities. The following year Memphis regained its city charter, and by the turn of the century the city was once again established as a booming trading center for cotton and lumber.
In the first half of the twentieth century adversities in Memphis—such as the 1937 Mississippi River flood that brought 60,000 refugees into the city—were offset by advances—such as the formation of the Memphis Park Commission, the establishment of colleges, airports, military installations, and municipal utilities, and construction of port improvements. In the 1960s Memphis annexed neighboring areas and was the subject of federal court decisions ordering desegregation of the city's schools, parks, and recreational facilities. The city's sanitation workers, protesting discriminatory labor practices in a 1968 strike, attracted civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., to their cause. On April 4, 1968, King, an advocate of nonviolent protest, was slain by a sniper at a Memphis motel. A steel structure entitled "The Mountaintop" honors King in Memphis's Civic Center Plaza. By 1973 court-ordered busing for school desegregation in Memphis was adopted without major incident, and the 1980 Memphis Jobs Conference, a broad-based economic planning initiative, was praised for its thorough integration of various Memphis sectors.
Present-day Memphis boasts renovated historic districts and city landmarks, striking new developments, and a diversified community of residents and workers. Traditional economic mainstays (such as cotton, lumber, and distribution) mix with services (including overnight package express, insurance, and hoteliery) and with newer enterprises (especially agricultural technology and biomedical technology) to make Memphis a strong economic community. Its strength supports academic institutions, health care facilities, and recreational assets and draws on a rich cultural and historical heritage, attracting both tourists and new residents to the river city on the bluffs.
Historical Information: Western Tennessee Historical Society Library, University of Memphis, McWherter Library Special Collections, Memphis, TN 38152; telephone (901)678-2210. Center for Southern Folklore Archives, 119 South Main Street, Memphis, TN 38103; telephone (901)525-3655. Memphis Pink Palace Museum Library, 3050 Central Avenue, Memphis, TN 38111; telephone (901)320-6368