Looking Up Clarksdale’s Martin Luther King Street (old Fourth Street) #jukejointfest

Sometime in the last five to ten years, Clarksdale renamed Fourth Street for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and while Dr. King is certainly deserving, it is odd to me that city officials chose to rename the street for him and not for the local civil rights leader Aaron Henry, whose pharmacy sat on the street well into the 1980’s. At any rate, the street was for many years the epicenter of Clarksdale’s Black business district, with restaurants, funeral homes, churches and night clubs. Red’s sits on the corner of MLK and Sunflower, and Messenger’s Pool Hall (another popular juke joint venue) sits directly on MLK. One wonders what Mr. Henry would think of Juke Joint Festival (or modern Clarksdale, for that matter) were he still alive.