Memphis's flag features three horizontal stripes: blue on top, white in the center (twice as wide), blue at the bottom. At the center is the municipal seal in color, showing a steamboat on the Mississippi with the rising sun behind it.
The Mississippi is not decorative for Memphis. It is everything. Memphis exists because of the river. Founded in 1819 on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi, Memphis became the largest cotton market in the world in the 19th century. Steamboats came down the river loaded with bales of cotton.
Beale Street, the heart of Memphis's historic Black district, is the birthplace of the blues. W.C. Handy, B.B. King, Muddy Waters played here. Sun Studio recorded Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins – creating rock and roll.
Elvis dominates Memphis like a ghostly presence. Graceland, his mansion turned museum, draws 600,000 visitors a year. It is the second most visited private home in America after the White House. Elvis died here in 1977, but he never really left.
Memphis is also the world capital of barbecue (Memphis style: dry ribs with a spice rub) and the home of FedEx, which employs 30,000 people locally. The blue-and-white flag with its steamboat is a reminder that it all begins with the river.