Memphis is a city in the southwest corner of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. Memphis rises above the Mississippi River on the 4^th Chickasaw Bluff just south of the mouth of the Wolf River.

As of 2007, Memphis had an estimated population of 674,028, making it the largest city in the state of Tennessee, the second largest in the Southeastern United States, and the 18th largest in the United States .

The greater Memphis metropolitan area, including adjacent counties in Mississippi and Arkansas, has a population of 1,260,581. This makes Memphis the second largest metropolitan area in Tennessee, surpassed only by metropolitan Nashville.

Memphis is the youngest of Tennessee's four major cities (traditionally including Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Nashville). A resident of Memphis is referred to as a Memphian and the Memphis region is known as the Mid-South.

History

main: History of Memphis, Tennessee

Early history

The land comprising present-day Memphis remained in a largely unorganized territory throughout most of the 18th century. By 1796, the community was the westernmost point of the newly admitted state of Tennessee.

Foundation

Memphis was founded in 1820 , the city was named after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River.

The cotton economy of the antebellum South depended on the forced labor of large numbers of African-American slaves, and Memphis became a major slave market.

Tennessee seceded from the Union in June 1861 and Memphis briefly became a Confederate stronghold. Union forces captured Memphis in the Battle of Memphis on June 6, 1862, and the city remained under Union control for the duration of the war. Memphis became a Union supply base and continued to prosper throughout the war.

In 1878, a yellow fever epidemic reduced the population by nearly 75%. The outbreak began in August and ended due to an early frost in October.

20th century

From the 1910s to the 1950s, Memphis was a hotbed of machine politics under the direction of E. H. "Boss" Crump. During the Crump era, Memphis developed an extensive network of parks and public works as part of the national City Beautiful Movement.

During the 1960s the city was at the center of civil rights issues, notably the location of a sanitation workers' strike. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 at the Lorraine Motel.