Today, the blues clubs and restaurants that line Beale Street are major tourist attractions in Memphis.

The first of these to call Beale Street home were the Young Men's Brass Band,[5] who were formed by Sam Thomas in 1867.

[5] During this time, Robert Church purchased land around Beale Street that eventually led to his becoming the first black millionaire from the south.

Wells was a co-owner and editor of an anti-segregationist paper called Free Speech based on Beale before her presses were destroyed by a white mob.

In 1903, Mayor Thornton was looking for a music teacher for his Knights of Pythias Band and called Tuskegee Institute to talk to his friend, Booker T. Washington, who recommended a trumpet player in Clarksdale, Mississippi named W. C. Handy.

One of Handy's proteges on Beale Street was the young Walter Furry Lewis, who later became a well known blues musician.

In his later years Lewis lived near Fourth and Beale, and in 1969 was recorded there in his apartment by Memphis music producer Terry Manning.

Matthew Thornton Sr., a well-known community leader, active in political, civic and social affairs and one of the charter members of the Memphis Branch of the NAACP, won the contest against nine opponents and received 12,000 of the 33,000 votes cast.

By the 1960s, Beale had fallen on hard times and many businesses closed, even though the section of the street from Main to 4th was declared a National Historic Landmark on May 23, 1966.

[10] In 2020, in Memphis, the Beale Street Historic District and the WDIA radio station were added to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail.