So for this day – I actually wrote a whole blog on my phone and when I exited out of it, it didn’t get saved!!!
You know when you’re so angry you’re like “F*** this!!” and leave it. Well that’s what I’ve done with Day 18.
I will however do a quick re-cap of my first day in Memphis…
That whole Saturday it was pretty much a driving day with a stop off at Little Rock Nine school.
If you’d never heard of ‘Little Rock Nine’ like I hadn’t, it’s a reference to a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957 by a lady called Daisy Bates.
The high school was originally an all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas but when these nine students came along, it became the Little Rock Crisis because of their skin color.
In 1896 there was a law passed by the U.S. Supreme Court which stated that there could be schools just for white children and schools just for black children. However, the schools for black children were not as good and people thought this was unfair.
When the Little Rock Nine turned up to school on the first day (Thanks to Daisy – an American civil rights activist) they got yelled at by other white students and blocked from entering the school by soldiers that the Arkansas governor Orval Faubus hired.
The students obviously hated it and returned home that day in tears.
This is when President Dwight Eisenhower stepped in. He sent the US Army to the school to protect the colored students so they could finally go to school and learn like everyone else.
They did get to study there eventually, but not without being bullied and called names by all the other students. Only 8 of the 9 students made it till the end of the year which I find very brave. I don’t think I could have done it.
However, after that first year the Governor closed all the public high schools in Little Rock as he thought it was better to have no schools at all than have mixed race schools in his town. Many people blamed the Little Rock Nine for this and the racism got even worse.
Obviously that was a very significant moment in history and even though things aren’t perfect today, we have come a long way.
Not all is bad for the Little Rock Nine though, one of the students ended up working for President Jimmy Carter as Assistant Secretary of Labor, Melba Beals became a reporter for NBC news, Thelma earned her master’s degree in Guidance and Counseling and Jefferson Thomas became an accountant for the United States Department of Defense.
Once we’d spent a few hours at the Little Rock Center we headed to Memphis to our hotel.
When I got off the bus, I grabbed my bags from under the coach and also my box of alcohol I’d bought in Dallas.
However, as soon as I went to go inside the hotel, the box came apart from underneath and all the bottles smashed to the ground *Sigh* not a good start to Memphis.
As I’m writing this entry nearly a year later (took me awhile to get over this post being deleted obviously) I can’t really remember quite what I did that night.
I know we all went out to dinner at this place called Kooky Canuck and it was terrible. I think Contiki usually takes their tour there when they’re in Memphis but it was really horrible. I think we went there because they do a ‘Big Burger Challenge’ where you can sign up to eat a massive burger and fries in a certain amount of time.
They did however have really big alcoholic beverages I enjoyed.
After dinner, we walked to Beale Street which is known in Memphis as the heart of all Blues music and entertainment. It’s made up of three blocks of nightclubs, restaurants and shops in the heart of downtown Memphis.It’s one of the coolest places to go if you’re ever in Memphis.
We all went to one club but we were literally the only people there (Maybe it was too early)
Myself and another girl Marisa ended up leaving the group to go and explore some other clubs as everyone wanted to stay
I remember we had such a fun night. We were taking Jello Shots and having drinks everywhere we went.
I think I went to sleep really late now that I think of it because I only had a few hours sleep until I had to wake up!
xx
I eventually got up and went downstairs for the breakfast buffet. I wish I took a picture of the food because there was so much to choose from! Defiantly one of the best buffet breakfast I’ve had. They had so many different stations of food. They had all different types of meats, Asian dishes, fried chicken, pancakes, waffles, cereals, ingredients to make your own burritos!! Thinking of it now makes me drool.
ThePassportPrincess 