Will you be there all day & one night or just evening/overnight? With a full day I'd start at the National Civil Rights Museum. Housed in the former Lorraine Motel, the museum leads you thru the civil rights struggle & concludes with a view of MLKs room as it was the morning he was shot on the balcony of his motel. Then head over to Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken for his famous hot chicken. From there, walk off lunch with a stroll along Beale Street Beale Street, the birthplace of blues, be sure to stop in Schwabs. Enjoy cocktails on the roof of the Peabody Hotel, get there about dusk to watch the ducks parade from the lobby, then up the elevator. If you're into this kind of thing, there's also an epic Bass Pro Shops, worth a stop, but maybe not worth the $15 bucks to ride to the top of the pyramid, but the view is awesome. Don't eat up there tho, overpriced and seriously average.
Mentioned in this answer:
Personally I'd start at the Memphis Visitor Center. We took a city tour which included the Peabody Hotel seeing the ducks come down the elevator, the historic Victorian homes in the Evergreen district, the Danny Thomas Pavilion at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Beale Street (where we stopped for lunch, ate at Dyer's Burgersand walked down to Handy Park and saw A. Schwab drugstore), drove by the Motel LORRAINE and saw the lady protesting the museum that it has become, and ended up at Graceland. We didn't go into Graceland, but you could take a tour that included that.
The next day, we rode the Trolleys through the downtown, and afterward we went to the Memphis Botanical Garden@
Mentioned in this answer:
