26 May 29 , 2022
I
arrive in Tupelo, about two hours southeast of Memphis, a few
days after the birthday celebration. I had expected tacky T-shirt
shops and Elvis-themed cafes with names like Grill Me Tender, but
the Elvis connection is muted. The hardware store where his mom
bought his first guitar is still a hardware store, not a shrine. Aside
from two alley walls with Elvis murals and a statue in the town
square commemorating a 1956 homecoming concert, Tupelo
seems quiet and quaint.
The Elvis birthplace and museum sit about a mile outside of
town on land that Elvis bought to create a town park. The
two-room shotgun house was built by his father, grandfather and
uncle. Unlike at Graceland, where an iPad tour includes narration
by John Stamos, the birthplace home tour takes me roughly two
minutes, long enough to see items like a quilt-covered bed and
wood stove.
After exploring the museum, I meet executive director Roy
Turner in his office. Turner recently retired from a 48-year career
in the pet food industry, but this, he says, is his dream job. Born and
raised in East Tupelo, Turner has Elvis connections: His dad
worked with Elvis’s mother, Gladys, in a shirt factory. When he was
28, Turner worked as a researcher for Elaine Dundy, the author of
“Elvis and Gladys.”
He explains to me the local social structure that existed during
Elvis’s childhood. For Whites, there was well-to-do Tupelo and
lower-class East Tupelo. A similar class structure existed for
African Americans. “You had the Hill, which had doctors, lawyers,
teachers, the people that own retail business,” says Turner. “And
you had Shake Rag, which was domestics, yard people, people that
work for the train, those kind of folks. And the people in the Hill
looked down at the people in Shake Rag.”sessions,” the rapper said. “As a Black
people, we all knew that. My whole thing
was the one-sidedness — like, Elvis’s icon
status in America made it like nobody else
counted. ... My heroes came before him. My
heroes were probably his heroes. As far as
Elvis being ‘The King,’ I couldn’t buy that.”
Elvis stirs strong racial reactions for
multiple reasons, notes Michael T. Ber-
trand, a history professor at Tennessee
State University, in his book “Race, Rock,
and Elvis.” His “success rested upon the
songs and styles of black artists historically
excluded from the popular music market-
place.” He was not only Southern, but he
owned an antebellum-style mansion that to
some evoked the Old South, and he sang
“Dixie” for years in concert as part of his
“American Trilogy.” He also associated
with racially conservative politicians such
as Richard Nixon and George Wallace.
Among White devotees, part of Elvis’s
idealized appeal is his humility, his gener-
osity, his spirituality and, yes, his supposed
lack of prejudice. But for many people of
color, a different image persists.
“Presley has become a symbol of all that
was oppressive to the black experience in
the Western Hemisphere,” Bertrand writes
in his book.Elvis performing in
1972.
photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images