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 4th 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, which only overtook Memphis in recent years.

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, particularly to media outlets, as the "Mid-South."

Early history
A Mississippian era priest (Digital illustration, 2004)

The Memphis area was first settled by the Mississippian Culture and then by the Chickasaw Indian tribe. European exploration came years later, with Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and French explorers led by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.

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.

19th century

Memphis was founded in 1819 by John Overton, James Winchester and Andrew Jackson. The city was named after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River. Memphis developed as a transportation center in the 19th century because of its flood-free location, high above the Mississippi River.

As the cotton economy of the antebellum South depended on the forced labor of large numbers of African-American slaves, Memphis became a major slave market. In 1857, the Memphis and Charleston Railroad was completed, the only East-West railroad across the southern states prior to the Civil War.
 

20th Century
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 the 1870s a series of yellow fever epidemics hit the city. The worst outbreak, in 1878, reduced the population by nearly 75% as many people died or fled the city permanently.

20th century
Cotton merchants on Union Avenue (1937)

Memphis grew into the world's largest spot cotton market and the world's largest hardwood lumber market. Into the 1950s, it was the world's largest mule market.

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.

Memphis is well known for its cultural contributions to the identity of the American south. Many renowned musicians grew up in and around the Memphis and northern Mississippi area.These included such musical greats as Elvis Presley, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, W.C. Handy, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. Jones, and Al Green.

The arts

Memphis is the home of founders and establishers of various American music genres, including Blues, Gospel, Rock n' Roll, Buck, Crunk, and "sharecropper" country music (in contrast to the "rhinestone" country sound of Nashville). Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and B. B. King were all getting their starts in Memphis in the 1950s. They are respectively dubbed the "King" of Country, Rock n' Roll, and Blues.

Well-known writers from Memphis include Civil War historian Shelby Foote and playwright Tennessee Williams. Novelist John Grisham grew up in nearby DeSoto County, Mississippi and many of his books are set in Memphis.

Christianity

Bellevue Baptist Church is a Southern Baptist megachurch in Memphis that was founded in the early 20th century. Its current membership is approximately 27,000. For many years, it was led by Adrian Rogers, a former three term president of the Southern Baptist Convention.