Compared to cities in the north, Memphis, Tennessee, is a polarizing community. With almost 700,000 residents and a metropolitan area in the top 25 nationally, Memphis is a large city. Along with its size and scope, Memphis is a place filled with its own unique set of issues and internal discourses just like any major national city. A city like Los Angeles has Skid Row where hundreds of homeless people sleep every night. In Detroit, blight is a huge problem. There is not a five square block section of the Motor City where you will not see urban decay. That decaying did not start yesterday. It started with the decisions that politicians made thirty years ago on what they would focus their efforts and the Detroit’s tax dollars on. And today, Detroit is paying the consequences for those short-sighted decisions.
In the same way that political decisions of yesteryear have determined a city’s current culture, those former mayors and city councilmen of the ’60s and ’70s created an environment in Memphis where racism and classism are the dominant blight on the face of the city. Called America’s distribution center in old advertisements, Memphis is home to shipping giant FedEx and is the single aerotropolis functioning in the nation today. One would think that with its unique position and the infrastructure it has in place that Memphis’ biggest problem might be something completely different than the one it faces today. But when you look at things from a longer lens and really grasp the critical decisions that were made or not made you can see how sister cities Nashville and Atlanta mushroomed while Memphis started the long process of pull-back that has it where it is today.
In 1960, Memphis and Atlanta where carbon copy cities. Around the same size with the same political drama, they were growing cities with tremendous racial tensions and epicenters for the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King pastured a church in the heart of Atlanta. At the same time, his dear friend Samuel Kyles pastured Monumental Baptist Church in Memphis. Neither city had carved out much of a niche for itself in terms of business. Memphis was still a stone’s throw from thousands of acres of cotton fields. While Atlanta was the same distance from tobacco farmers who used Atlanta to distribute their goods. Both cities experienced traumatic racial episodes during the height of the civil rights movement. While King preached We Shall Overcome on Sundays in Atlanta he led marches in Memphis for sanitation workers so they could experience a slice of the American dream.
Similarities aside, today Memphis and Atlanta are two completely different cities. While Atlanta’s population has changed little over the years, the communities within thirty minutes of Atlanta have catapulted Atlanta into an international city with a metropolitan population close to four times its size. That happened because one city chose to deal with its issues while the other chose to act like those very same issues were not the ones holding the city back from its bright future.
When you look at Memphis and Atlanta and the growth that Atlanta has experienced and Memphis has not the obvious assumption would be that Atlanta simply had more to work with than Memphis did. But that could not be farther from the truth. From its capital and tax base, institutional investors were willing to make the same commitments to Memphis and Atlanta at the same time. Atlanta is home to UPS while Memphis has the aforementioned FedEx. The single difference that changed the fortunes of one was the decision the people of Atlanta made to move it forward.
Almost unanimously through a vote that took place when Maynard Jackson was elected mayor of Atlanta, Hotlanta has seen its fortunes change. It is hard to gauge what Maynard did specifically and maybe nothing was really required other than the healing that took place amidst the citizens when a black man began to lead that city. It was another twenty years before Memphis would make the same decision. And by then, the city’s racial divide had intensified to the point where the distrust between the black and white communities could be cut with a dull kitchen knife.
Maynard’s election as mayor opened Atlanta up in a way that nothing else could. Atlanta’s choice for inclusion opened the doors for people from all over the country and all over the world to come and make it home. Which is why it is not surprising that some call Atlanta the most diverse city in the south. That distinction cannot be lost. When you live in Memphis and read the local newspaper and watch the local television news the most glaring thing you see or hear is role that race plays. You cannot hear a hot-button issue in Memphis and not hear someone interject race as the underlying cause. That makes it difficult for Memphis to move beyond where it is as a community. When someone is shot, race is the issue. When someone loses their job, race is the issue. When a building collapses or a house gets broken into, race is the reason. At least it is, if you read the newspapers or watch the television channels and hear citizens respond to the events of the day.
That reality separates Memphis into a tale of two cities. Black Memphis and White Memphis exist for most Memphians. That is why a white, Jewish man can be told that he cannot represent a large section of the city in Washington D.C. as a United States Representative. It is also why a young black boy can be shot by a police officer and charges of racial profiling and racial sensitivity immediately get injected.
With sixty percent of the city of Memphis being people of color, one would think that race would be a non-issue. However, Black Memphis and White Memphis have agreed on their boundaries and neither makes a serious look at breaking down those boundaries even though the city has the most to gain by it taking place.
So what does Memphis do? It has a black man in office. It has a solid airport with international flights daily. It has a professional sports franchise and a nationally ranked college basketball team that sells out every home game. But what can Memphis do? Does Memphis know?
Maybe the answer lies not in what has happened but what did not happen.
