After we went to Rum Boogie Café, toured Beale Street, and listened to street musicians, we stumbled across the Police Museum. It is open 24 hours and there is no charge to get in. We found it intriguing. We must have stayed a couple hours browsing around (if I wasn’t tired by then, I could have spent a half-day there). As soon as you walk in, you see a desk sergeant and signs saying to be quiet. There was a real jail cell in there, too. And if you’d like, you can get your picture taken in it. The inside of the building was not terribly large, but it was stuffed with a lot of glass cases filled with a variety of artifacts.
I remember that one glass case had all the drug paraphernalia the officers confiscated from criminals. Another case had contraband taken from the convicts. And yet another case had interesting documents from the 1800s and 1900s. Some included documents on famous criminals like James Earl Ray (there was the extradition order for him for assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr.). But through others, especially the articles from the 1800s, you can witness the enslavement of black people. For instance, one article/police report stated that a black man was the property of a white man and that he was released to the custody of the white man after he had served some time for a small theft. It was very upsetting to read these types of things, but it is history that needs to be told and viewed so it will never be repeated.
I highly recommend this museum for families who have older children. With the guidance of their parent(s) or legal guardian, this museum will assist with their understanding of our true American history (the good and the bad concerning the criminal justice system and society in general back in the 1800s and part of the 1900s).