Riverside Hotel - Clarksdale

Founded in 1944 by Mrs. ZL Hill, the Riverside Hotel was a safe haven for African Americans during segregation. Many Black musicians stayed or roomed here including Sam Cooke, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2, Ike Turner, and Robert Nighthawk. Before that, the building opened its doors on July 12, 1916, as the Clarksdale Colored Hospital and served African Americans of the Delta until 1942. The Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith, died here on September, 26, 1937, from injuries sustained in a car accident just north of Clarksdale on Highway 61.

The Riverside Hotel was dreamed up, owned, and operated by an entrepreneurial African American woman, Mrs. ZL Hill. Although Clarksdale had Black rooming houses and private homes offering accommodations before and during World II in Jim Crow-era Mississippi, the Riverside became the premier establishment after Mrs. Hill opened on November 9, 1944. Her application for a city business license was dated July 30, 1945. The hotel played host to a Who’s Who of Black musicians, both national touring acts and local artists who roomed here. In addition to many blues performers, guests included the Staple Singers, Five Blind Boys, other gospel groups and Rev. C.L. Franklin. To many of these artists, including Tina Turner, Mrs. Hill was commonly referred to as “Momma.” Mrs. Hill once proclaimed, “I knew Ike Turner when he was in his momma’s belly.”

The basement of the Riverside was one of the sites where Ike Turner and his band, the Kings of Rhythm, featuring vocalist Jackie Brenston, rehearsed during the early 1950s. In 1951, the band traveled to Memphis to record “Rocket ‘88’”, credited to Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, considered by many historians to be the first rock ‘n’ roll record. Mrs. Hill, who also worked as a seamstress, embroidered “Rocket ‘88’” neckties for the group, which also included Raymond Hill, Willie Kizart and Willie “Bad Boy” Sims. In 2021, the City of Clarksdale passed a resolution declaring the Riverside as the “site where Blues gave birth to Rock n Roll.”

Prior to the Riverside era, the property played a prominent role in the community, first as the Clarksdale Colored Hospital, later called the Ancient Order of Watchmen Hospital. At one time it was operated by Black businessman G.T. Thomas and Charles Haffer Jr., a blind balladeer, composer and philanthropical activist who recorded for Alan Lomax and John W. Work III during a Library of Congress/Fisk University project in 1942. Years after Bessie Smith, the biggest blues star of the 1920s, died at the hospital in 1937, the room where she passed was preserved as a shrine in her honor.

In 2023 the National Parks Service added the Riverside to its historic African American Civil Rights Network in recognition of Mrs. Hill’s significant contributions. A notable guest who visited with Mrs. Hill and stayed in the hotel in 1991 was John F. Kennedy Jr. Mrs. Hill, who was born April 28, 1907, in Hermanville, Mississippi, in Claiborne County, died on April 14, 1997. Her son Frank (Rat) Ratliff, a charismatic local blues historian and passionate storyteller, and his wife, Joyce, carried on her legacy at the hotel. After the deaths of Frank on March 28, 2013, and Joyce on January 18, 2021, Mrs. Hill’s granddaughters, Zelena Ratliff and Sonya Gates, became the new owners and operators. In 2025 they established an Interpretive Center, the Living Blues and Civil Rights Museum, towards the preservation of the hotel’s vaunted heritage.

The original Riverside marker honoring Bessie Smith was No. 4 on the Blues Trail, dedicated in 2007. Content was revised for a rededication during the October 2025 opening of the Riverside Hotel Interpretive Center – Living Blues and Civil Rights Museum. Research and writing credits: Ron Woywitka, Jim O’Neal, Zelena Ratliff, Sonya Gates and Nancy Kossman.

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