It’s not unusual for artists to keep weird hours. Which is why, in the wee hours of April 28 — the night that Clayborn Temple burned — Lonnie Robinson was working.
The artist, whose stunning stained glass windows had become a defining feature of Historic Clayborn Temple’s restoration, had his phone on silent, as he often does during late-night sessions. That night, he didn’t hear the sirens, didn’t see the smoke or the flames. In fact, it wasn’t until multiple text messages woke him the next morning that he got the news.
“I saw two words: ‘fire’ and ‘Clayborn Temple,'” Robinson recalled. “And I rolled back over. I knew I was going to have to deal with that. I’m glad I didn’t see it. It would’ve been traumatic. Just hearing about it was enough.”
Even more traumatic: Memphis Police and Fire officials are now investigating the blaze as arson, and a potential suspect is being sought.
But good news has followed: Civic leaders have made full throated pledges to restore Clayborn. And on Wednesday, May 28, just yards away from the mounds of rubble where the temple stood, the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund announced a $1.5 million grant, to shore up the building’s structure and provide runway for a larger effort to fund whatever the iconic structure will become next.
“God wants Clayborn Temple to live,” said Anasa Troutman, executive director of the Clayborn Restoration Project and CEO of The BIG We.
‘Do you know Clayborn Temple is on fire?’
Forget a rollercoaster — for Troutman, the fire and its aftermath has been more like an emotional bungee jump: freefall, bounceback, more freefall. And it started with a nightmare of a phone call from one of Troutman’s cousins, a nurse who’d seen the fire on the news at 2 a.m.
“She woke me up and said, ‘Do you know Clayborn Temple is on fire?’ And of course, I did not,” Troutman said. “I jumped up and got dressed. I was probably on site by 2:30.”
They wouldn’t let her close at first. Fire crews and first responders tried to keep her at bay, protectively shielding her from what was unfolding.
“I think they were trying to protect me — not protect the fire,” she said. “Keep me from seeing it, because I was obviously visibly upset.”
She approached from the MLK side, stopping about a block away near the firehouse. From there, she couldn’t yet see how bad the fire was.
“People were saying words like ‘engulfed’ and ‘collapse,’ and I was like — what do you mean?” Troutman said. “I didn’t actually see the building until maybe 3:30 or 4.”
She thought about calling Lonnie.
“At the point where we were at in the restoration, you can’t think about the work that we’ve done already and not think about Lonnie,” she said. “You just can’t. You can’t look at the building or think about the building or the work we’ve done and not think about those windows — not just because it was obviously beautiful, but because the innovation that he had to engage in to get them to look the way they did.”
She paused, then added: “We used to talk about how those windows would be there for 100 years. That literally was a conversation we were having when they were complete — everyone was looking at them, beaming, excited. And they were there for a year.”
What was lost
The fire that engulfed Clayborn Temple wasn’t just the destruction of a building — it was a wound to the heart of Memphis and to a sacred site of national importance. It’s not a stretch to refer to the tragedy as “America’s Notre Dame” for its tragic similarities to the cathedral in Paris, which burned in 2019. Clayborn Temple stood as a rare convergence of spiritual legacy, civil rights history and architectural grandeur.
Originally constructed in 1892 as Second Presbyterian Church, the Romanesque structure was, for a time, the largest church building south of the Ohio River. In 1949, it was sold to the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and renamed Clayborn Temple, becoming a vital center of Black civic and spiritual life in Memphis.
Its most indelible imprint on American history came during the 1968 Sanitation Workers Strike, when it served as headquarters for the movement. It was from Clayborn that thousands marched carrying the now-iconic “I AM A MAN” signs — a moment forever linked to the final chapter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life.
In the decades that followed, the building fell into disrepair, suffering from neglect, water damage and structural decay. But in recent years, under Troutman’s leadership and with support from local and national stakeholders, Clayborn Temple had begun a long-awaited renaissance.
Collaboration and craftsmanship
While Lonnie Robinson’s vision helped define the project, he wasn’t working alone. The stained glass murals were a collaboration — co-designed with Memphis artist Sharday Michelle Williams and executed with the technical guidance of Andy Young, founder of Pearl River Glass Studio in Jackson, Mississippi.
“Robinson and Williams brought the art,” Young said. “We brought the glass.”
Young’s studio was responsible for the full restoration of Clayborn’s historic stained glass windows — a five-year process involving removal, repair and reinstallation. He also helped train Robinson in the fused glass techniques that brought the murals to life.
“Lonnie had never done that kind of glass work before,” said Young. “But he jumped right in. We worked side-by-side in the studio, turning his drawings into something permanent. He rose to the occasion.”
Young emphasized the collective effort behind the project — including a local steel craftsman, Lorenzo Scruggs, who built the custom window frames, and partnerships with Memphis organizations like Advance Memphis to house temporary workspaces.
“We had people on that job for years,” he said. “(That it’s gone) hasn’t even sunk in yet.”
‘That hit me in the chest’
The loss of the windows was a gut punch for Robinson, who had to learn a whole new way to execute his art to create them.
“That was a 2.5-year task for me,” he said. “And I have to tell you, it was something to learn. We changed the process. They trained me to become a fused glass contractor myself. I wanted to supervise the fabrication and really get the results I intended in the renderings.”
He described the work in vivid terms: “A lot of people look at it and think we painted — no. It was glass dropped on glass. Almost like making a pizza. You’re layering glass and then you’re putting it all in a kiln to make it one piece of glass.”
The process wasn’t just technical — it was deeply personal. He’d worked with some of those he would feature in the glass artwork. Among them, Maxine Smith, a legendary Civil Rights activist in Memphis and the former secretary of the local NAACP chapter. So he wanted to get everything right.
“We had the first soft opening and several family members came,” Robinson said. “They cheered me on in terms of capturing the likenesses. That was very important to me — that these pieces looked like the individuals we were honoring.”
‘I want to see a silver lining in all this’
When he finally did visit the site later that afternoon, the damage stunned him.
“Looking at the front from the west elevation — where the marching scene was — that was completely level. That hit me in the chest. It knocked me back a bit,” Robinson said.
And yet, he says, he was surprised by his own resilience.
“I’m not as devastated as I would’ve imagined I would be. I don’t know why, but I’m not,” he said. “I want to see a silver lining in this. We would be able to tell more of the story. More people, more portraits.
“There’s nothing we can do to change what happened that night,” he continued. “So I have to look at this as glass half full.”
Thirty days later . . .
That brings us back to the $1.5 million grant announcement on May 28, and the occasion around it. It is common in the Black Church that a season of mourning becomes a reason to celebrate, and it was no different this day. The mood and the message from city leaders, national allies and Memphis residents was clear: Clayborn Temple will not be mourned — it will be reborn. Memphis Mayor Paul Young was among the first.
“We’re a city that knows how to rise again and again,” he said. “And it’s really, really, really important that we make sure that we come together and make sure that we turn this into a showcase — a space where a tragedy occurred, but we rise from that tragedy greater than we were before.”
“Clayborn Temple will rise again — not just as a restored structure, but as a living, breathing center for cultural, economic and civic renewal,” said City Council Chair J. Ford Canale. “A place where the past is honored, the present is activated and the future is shaped.
“You have my word and my promise: The Memphis City Council will support the reimagining of Clayborn Temple,” he concluded.
Then came Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, and the announcement of a $1.5 million collective grant from the National Trust, the Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation. These funds will fill the immediate need to further stabilize the remaining structure and to provide Troutman the working capital to execute a vision that hasn’t even begun to come into focus yet.
“There was never one doubt that we were not going to rescue this irreplaceable history,” Leggs told The Tri-State Defender. “It was just, what’s the strategy? How fast can we move?”
Among other featured guests that day: Martin Luther King III, who delivered the poignant perspective of a son still missing his father. U.S. Congressman Steve Cohen also pledged support. But the day wasn’t just about speeches and grants.
After the formal ceremony, community members broke into smaller workshop sessions — an intentional kickoff to the next phase: a citywide process to reimagine what Clayborn Temple can and should become. Attendees contributed ideas, reflections and hopes for how the site could honor its legacy while serving future generations.
Commitment to home grown talent
From the beginning of her involvement with Clayborn’s restoration, Troutman was determined to use local talent. She learned that the “I Am A Man” Plaza at the site hadn’t been done by a local artist and was told that there wasn’t anyone in Memphis with the capacity to do a large steel installation.
“I was like, no one’s ever going to say that to me again,” she told The Tri-State Defender in early May. “Memphis is such a place of innovation and creativity and imagination that our artists deserve to have the skill and the capacity and the pay of doing that kind of work.”
Troutman thought back to Notre Dame’s recent reopening. Just as that fire created an opportunity for today’s craftspeople to literally help shape history, Troutman sees Clayborn Temple’s restoration as a chance to drive another artistic renaissance in Memphis.
“There’s a new generation of craftspeople and woodworkers and metalworkers and people who will have their hands on this site,” she said. “That will happen.”
Andy Young said his team at Pearl River Glass is ready if Troutman calls.
“I would love it if we get the chance to do it again,” Young said. “We’ve got all of Lonnie’s renderings saved. We have the technology. We could recreate the murals, no problem. I’d be the first to raise my hand and say, ‘Let’s go.’
“I’m a believer in Anasa Troutman,” Young continued. “That woman’s a force. My money’s on the house — she’s gonna get it done.”
To learn more about the restoration or to contribute, visit https://clayborn.org. Anyone with information related to the Clayborn Temple arson investigations is urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 901-528-CASH (2274) or the Tennessee Arson Hotline at 1-800-762-3017.
