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RIVERSIDE HOTEL
11 Most Endangered HISTORICAL PLACES 2021
by the National Trust for Historic Preservation
Save Black Family-Owned
Historical Blues Hotel
Where Blues Gave Birth to “Rock and Roll”
Please help us Save the most Historic Blues Hotel in America …The Riverside Hotel is located in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Our beloved Riverside Hotel is in trouble! Covid-19 shut the hotel down in 2020, then a violent storm fell a tree onto the hotel, causing extensive damage. With the hotel now closed and overheads and critical repairs in progress; the Hotel’s owners, sisters Zelena Ratliff and Sonya Gates, desperately need to raise operating funds to cover basic monthly expenses and pay for critical repairs, pending the hotel’s planned re-opening by Fall 2026.
The Riverside Hotel “was dreamed up, owned, and operated by our grandmother, an African American woman, Mrs. Z. L. Hill, living in Jim Crow–era Mississippi”; and since 1944 and up until the Pandemic in 2020, the Riverside Hotel had “provided safe lodging in the Delta for some of the most famous musicians in history as well as like-minded folk”, and was the place “where Blues Gave Birth to Rock and Roll”.
After his beloved mother Mrs. Z.L. Hill passed, her son Frank “Rat” Ratliff took over the operations of The Riverside; where he became an enthusiastic historian of the hotel and helped preserve and carry forward the oral and pictorial history of the Hotel’s many visitors. Today, these stories; of Rocket ’88 being written and rehearsed at the Riverside, Robert Nighthawk’s suitcase being left behind, and many others have become a precious legacy for his daughters, Zelena and Sonya and future generations of the Ratliff Family.
The Riverside was home to some, including the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson II, Ike Turner and Robert Nighthawk. Others, like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Sam Cooke, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Duke Ellington made the Riverside Hotel their home away from home as they toured and crisscrossed the South. Rocket 88; considered to be the first Rock N Roll song ever, was written and rehearsed at The Riverside Hotel by Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston.
Prior to becoming the Riverside Hotel, the property opened its doors in 1916 as the Clarksdale Colored Hospital and for 27 years operated as a Black Hospital serving the Black community till its closing in 1942. In 1937 the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith was brought to the Hospital, seriously injured in a car wreck while travelling between shows, and where she died of her injuries. Today, the room she passed in is preserved as a shrine in her honor, as a tribute to the most famous woman in Blues History.
Our Goal is to raise at least $50,000 by establishing an EMERGENCY OPERATING FUND, to help sustain the Hotel and prepare the Hotel to re-open for business.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation listed the Riverside Hotel as one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2021. In 2023, the National Parks Service placed the Hotel on its African American Civil Rights network due to its role as a safe haven for Blacks to stay during segregation. In addition, the Riverside Hotel was listed in the famed Negro Motorist Green Book. Original owner, Mrs. Z.L. Hill's granddaughters, Sonya Gates and Zelena Ratliff, are working to ensure that their family's legacy and the legacy of blues history is preserved for generations to come.
Riverside Hotel: Where Blues Gave Birth to “Rock and Roll”
"ROCKET 88" The FIRST ROCK N ROLL SONG EVER WAS WRITTEN AND REHEARSED AT THE RIVERSIDE HOTEL by IKE TURNER and JACKIE BRENSTON before being recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis. READ MORE….