New Sultana Museum takes in lives lost and lives lived after 1865 disaster on Mississippi River
A mural of the riverboat Sultana at the Sultana Disaster Musem in Marion, Ark. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian)
The new Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Arkansas, opens Saturday, Nov. 14, with a sprawling story of the April 1865 steamboat disaster’s place at the turbulent end of the Civil War.
It’s a story that crosses the lives of more than a thousand people who died on a flood-swollen Mississippi River and in crowded Memphis hospitals; almost a thousand more survivors; descendants of all involved; and a war that still divides Americans 161 years later.
The heart of the $12 million museum and archive is a darkened area with projected water moving on the floor and wooden shards — some of them burned — at eye level and higher bathed in red light. In the center, a shaft of light rests on a brass hand rising from a column of moving dark, cold water.
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Sultana Sultana Disaster Museum John Fogleman Jerry Potter Jeff Kollath Gene Salecker Civil War Marion Arkansas Subscriber OnlyThank you for reading The Daily Memphian. Your support is critical.
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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