Review of Room 306: the National Story of the Lorraine Motel Ben Kamin

Skillfully crafted, Room 306, using oral history, tells a part of the incredible story of the Lorraine Motel, the cite of Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the creation of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine.  Kamin, who penned Nothing Like Sunshine: A Story in the Aftermath of the MLK Assassination in 2010, is creative in both his choice of topic and construction of the story.  Room 306 connects Martin King and the civil rights movement to the continuing struggles fighting class disparity and racism; and Kamin does it through the efforts in Memphis and throughout the United States to keep the good works of King and The Movement alive.

Each chapter of Room 306 is formed through an oral history of someone who was either at the Lorraine Motel the night of the assassination, or was/is directly involved in the making and administrating of the National Civil Rights Museum.  Beginning with some history of King and the Memphis strike (the reason Martin Luther King was in the city) as well as a touch of MLK’s relationship with Ralph Abernathy, chapters include the stories, chronologically, of Memphis pastor Billy Kyles, local lawyers Lucius Burch and Charles Newman, Kentucky legislator Georgia Davis Powers, the incredible non-violent activist James Lawson, NAACP leader Maxine Smith, D’Army Bailey, the founder of the Museum, Pitt Hyde, the funder of the Museum, and civil rights photographer, Ernest Withers.  There are also chapters for Julian Bond, Clay Carson, Beverly Robertson who presently leads the Museum, and more.  The essence of Kamin’s book, however, is not in the list of people whose stories he tells, but rather in the connection of their humanity, however flawed, to the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, and continuing his legacy and the fight against race disparity and racism through the stories told at the National Civil Rights Museum. 

Ben Kamin was a rabbi in Cleveland, Ohio at one point in his life and he befriended Louis Stokes, long time Ohio representative in Congress.  At one point Stokes said, “Ben Kamin can talk to anybody about anything.”  But more importantly for this book, Ben Kamin can listen and treat the people who let him into their lives with calm analysis that is true to their stories.  There are controversial issues within the stories told in Room 306, but Kamin is able to tell them in a poignant, yet non- judgmental way.  He is gentle as he writes about Dr. King’s lover, just as he is when he reports on Museum controversies.  Most importantly, in the tradition of the greatest, oral historian, Studs Terkel, he allows people to tell their own stories, the stories that they want to tell.  In doing so, Ben Kamin tells a human side of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and his continuing light through the National Civil Rights Museum.