MEMPHIS — Come to this Mississippi River port, and you're supposed to see Graceland, Beale Street, Sun Studio and the ducks at the Peabody Hotel. And you should. But if you bypass — as too many visitors do — the National Civil Rights Museum, you've missed not only the soul of the city, but also a big part of the heart of America.

The museum opened in 1991. It traces the role of the civil rights struggle in the United States from the inception of slavery until today. In its early years, the museum was barely on the tourism industry radar. But in its second decade, that's changed, with well-marked highway exit signs and fliers available at major tourist venues, including Graceland, 15 miles south, where the annual visitor level of 600,000 far surpasses the 160,000 for the museum .

National Civil Rights Museum (ENLARGE)
The museum's tour of the civil rights movement includes re-creations of sit-ins at lunch counters across the South.
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IF YOU GO Getting there • Flying: Expect to pay about $150 round trip from Atlanta to Memphis. • Driving: Memphis is about 400 miles away, about a 7 1/2-hour drive from downtown Atlanta. About the museum • The National Civil Rights Museum, 450 Mulberry St. Admission: $11 adults, $9 college students and seniors, $7.50 children 4-17. 901-521-9699, Web site.

But "a residual flow" of Elvis pilgrims trickles over to the civil rights site, as does a steady stream of international visitors, said spokeswoman Gwen Harmon.

Attendance is also getting a boost these days from the museum's location adjacent to the revitalized South Main Arts District, just blocks from downtown. Special events, such as the annual Freedom Awards, whose honorees include Jimmy Carter, Coretta Scott King, Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela and, most recently, rock star/activist Bono, also help spread the word.

And if people still don't know about the museum, chances are they have heard of the Lorraine Motel.

The two structures are in the same space, the 40,000-square-foot museum having grown, literally, out of the grounds of the old inn on Mulberry Street where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Efforts to preserve the motel led to larger ambitions to create the museum, which houses a visually and emotionally stunning record of the impact of slavery and racism — and the fight against both — in America.

The drama begins as visitors approach the carefully preserved exterior of the motel, still denoted by its original marquee. All is just as it was on April 4, 1968, when King stepped out on the second-floor balcony in front of his room, 306, and was shot by a sniper.

Visitors can see King's room at the end of the tour. Re-created to appear exactly as it did before he was to leave for a never-fulfilled appointment to speak in support of a sanitation workers' strike, the room is a poignant personal coda of half-empty coffee cups; half-eaten trays of food; unmade bed; a plain, black dial phone on a nightstand.

By the time most visitors have reached that point, the full impact of King's murder, in the context of a long, violent history, seems to invite mostly silence. And long looks out the window, across the street, toward the bathroom window of the boarding house where James Earl Ray — who confessed to the murder and later recanted — is believed to have hidden with his scoped .30-06 Remington rifle. Surprisingly, the distance really isn't that far.

Visitors to the museum are assisted by a 10-minute introductory film and a self-paced audio guide — narrated by Ruby Dee and her late husband Ossie Davis. The historical timelines, biographical sketches and interactive, life-size exhibits in 19 halls easily add up to a riveting use of a couple of hours.

One of the primary goals of the museum is to set up what might be called context. In this case, the context began with the arrival of slaves in the colonies in 1619. From there it grew and transformed not only through the Civil War but also countless other struggles, from integrating hotels, drinking fountains and trains to enrolling James Meredith at the University of Mississippi in the presence of 16,000 federal troops. The context walks across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Ala., and sits in at lunch counters across the South.

The museum documents the assault on African- Americans — a combination of indignities, insults and outright violence such as lynchings and murders. A TV monitor replays news footage of actual sit-ins, complete with scenes of beatings and harassment in the presence of compliant police. Given the terror that accompanied the African-American experience in the United States, it would be easy to think of the museum as depressing. Far from it. The message by the end of the tour is clearly one of triumph. King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," known to millions of schoolchildren, remains a brilliant argument for social justice.

Reading it next to a re-creation of the tiny cell in which its author was jailed in 1963 is to see history as it was truly lived, in real time, by real people, making real sacrifice.