John Elkington moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to start law school in 1970, a year after urban clearance claimed its first building on Beale Street. The twenty-two-year-old student walked down Beale Street trying to imagine what it was like in its heyday, before the crumbling buildings and bulldozers. In the first half of the twentieth century, Beale Street was a popular destination for African American southerners who came there to support the musicians and shop owners located on the segregated strip.