Nelson: Why Sinatra came to Memphis
Michael Nelson
Michael Nelson is contributing editor and columnist for The Daily Memphian, the political analyst for WMC-TV, and the Fulmer professor of political science at Rhodes College. His latest books are “Clinton's Elections: 1992, 1996, and the Birth of a New Era of Governance" and “The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-2018.”
Frank Sinatra spent most of his life not liking us much. The South during the early and middle years of Sinatra’s career as the preeminent vocalist of his era — the 1940s through the 1960s — was a hotbed of racial bigotry, one of the things he hated most.
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