Riverside Hotel Interpretive Center

Living Blues and Civil Rights Museum

615 Sunflower Avenue, Clarksdale, Mississippi

BOOK YOUR TOUR TODAY:
CALL 662-624-7717 or Email justingates40@gmail.com

The historic Riverside Hotel is more than a building. It is where music, resilience, and civil rights converge. Built in 1916 as one of Mississippi’s only Black hospitals, it is remembered as the place where blues legend Bessie Smith tragically passed in 1937. In 1944, Mrs. ZL Hill transformed the property into a safe haven for traveling musicians and civil rights leaders. She welcomed some of the most famous bluesmen and women of all time and within its walls, the sound that gave birth to rock ’n’ roll was nurtured. Today, the Riverside Hotel is honored as an official stop on the Mississippi Blues Trail, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, part of the National Park Service African American Civil Rights Network, and named one of America’s Most Endangered Historic Places (2021) by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.