The Reopening of the Riverside Hotel Clarksdale, Mississippi

Several historical buildings lean precariously alongside the endangered Sunflower River in Clarksdale, Miss., in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.

The main building was shifting and almost fell in the river. The walls were beginning to cave in after a tree fell on one building that was once a healing place for sick and injured souls and later a safe haven hotel for “negro travelers” in the south.

The Riverside Hotel, a multi-generational Black-owned piece of property, is being repaired and renovated.

If these walls could talk.

There is a room-turned-shrine, where blues legend Bessie Smith died in 1937 in what was, at the time, an African American Hospital, Clarksdale Colored Hospital. In the basement was the morgue.

The hospital was eventually converted into a hotel that was listed in The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, a guide that listed hotels and restaurants for blacks in the Jim Crow South.

Throughout the years many Black entertainers and Blues legends stayed at Riverside Hotel, including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Sam Cooke.

Now, it’s once again becoming a museum and interpretive center spilling over with blues history. They will eventually offer lodging in the rooms, except for the sacred space where Bessie Smith passed away. The rooms are being restored to the hotel days, complete with original furnishings.

You can sleep where many music legends slept.

In the 1980’s the morgue area basement was revamped into a hot spot and neighborhood disco, allowing guests to drink, dance and forget their troubles, if only for a while.

“They came down these stairs and boogied all night” says Justin Gates, whose family owns the hotel.

And early in the 1990s, blues fan John Kennedy Jr. who had been named the sexiest man alive at the time, came to listen to blues and to hide out. “He spent hours listening to stories by my great grandmother,” says Gates of Z.L. Hill, who owned the hotel.

The hotel is just down the street from the Blues Crossroads, the spot in Clarksdale where legend claims Blues musician Robert Johnson “sold his soul to the devil” for his musical expertise. Clarksdale, about 75 miles south of Memphis is rich in black and blues history and culture.

The hotel may have been saved just in time. In 2021, it was named to the list if the 11 Most Endangered Historical Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Sunflower River, down to a trickle, itself is listed as endangered.

“When you saw the light flick on you knew he wasn’t working up here anymore he was downstairs working on the club,” added another family member Darrius Gates.

Clarksdale prides itself on still having an authentic blues scene, with live music seven nights a week. https://www.clarksdale.com/

The hotel, with over twenty rooms, has been added to the African American Civil Rights Network. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/african-american-civil-rights-network.htm

It is also listed on the Mississippi Blues Trail. https://visitmississippi.org/things-to-do/blues-trail/mississippi-blues-trail-riverside-hotel/