NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — It's been a part of downtown Nashville for nearly one hundred years, and it carries a major significance to the city's Black history. Now, an upcoming event is looking to save it by transforming the building into a museum.
"I remember the cafeteria, the little restaurant that was there served very good meat and three," said Linda T. Wynn of the Tennessee Historical Commission and chair of the Metro Historical Commission.
Wynn's memories inside the Morris Memorial Building date back to the 70s. 300 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. has never been more important to her.
"It's always a battle when you're in the preservation business," she said.
In a part of downtown that was once a slave market, when the Morris was built nearly a hundred years ago, it became part of an African American business district. It was the home of the National Baptist Convention and printed hymnals and songbooks. It was all in a building designed by the historic Black architectural firm McKissack & McKissack.
"Our ancestors and foreparents a few decades out of the institution of enslavement persevered and had dreams and brought those dreams to a reality," Wynn continued.
The Morris has seen better days with the old lettering peeling away on the windows and doors and a currently unused building's future uncertain Wynn is speaking up.
"The Morris Memorial Building is the last standing building in what used to be the African American business district," Wynn said, speaking from a podium at a press conference. "It is a monument of sorts that tells us about the tenacity of our foreparents."
In the middle of council members, community leaders, and historians, Wynn's helping promote a Metro Human Relations Commission benefit concert to be held at the Ryman on July 15th. Headlined by Grandmaster Flash, money raised will go to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee for a campaign to turn the Morris into a museum. Wynn's hope is it can be a Civil Rights museum, between the building's own role in Black history and its location near where the people of the Nashville sit-ins worked to desegregate the city.
Wynn was previously in a committee for former mayor David Briley that looked at uses for the Morris Building if the city were to buy it. The city turned down the chance to buy the building under Mayor John Cooper in 2020, citing budget constraints.
