To learn more about this collaborative research project, please visit the MZMF website HERE
MZMF designed this survey to identify new sources of information about the hospital, hotel, its founder, Mrs. Z. L. Ratliff Hill, and her son, Frank Ratliff, as well as provide donors and blues enthusiasts with an easy method to share information and media about the hotel. We are also looking to interview people about their experiences at the hotel, and we hope to connect the RHAAHPC to blues enthusiasts who stayed at the hotel.
If you have information, photographs, videos, or other media about the hotel, and you would like to share it with the RHAAHPC, please answer the questions in this short survey. If you provide contact information, we will reach out to you as soon as possible.
The main structure of the Riverside Hotel was built in 1916, and it served as a hospital for African Americans until 1942. On September 26, 1937, legendary recording artist Bessie Smith was taken to the hospital after a car accident outside Clarksdale; the room where she passed on now serves as a shrine to her spirit and the blues, which are one and the same.
In 1943, Mrs. Z.L. Hill transformed the hospital into a hotel, and she added a two-floor extension to the building to accommodate more than twenty guests. In 1944, the Riverside Hotel opened for business, and it served as a popular place in Clarksdale for African Americans to stay during racial segregation. Later, Mrs. Hill purchased the main building and several adjacent shotgun houses. After her untimely passing in the 1990s, her son Frank Ratliff took over operation of the hotel, and the property remains in the hands of his descendants still today.
The Riverside Hotel is currently under renovation, but the family plans to reopen the hotel as soon as possible and establish an interpretive center in the room once occupied by Mrs. Hill. You can play an important role in the process by answering the questions in this brief survey and sharing your stories and media about the hotel.
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