MLK’s bus victory rings hollow now as mass transit still fails minorities
In the National Civil Rights Museum, a 1950-era city bus symbolizes the cause that handed a young preacher, Martin Luther King Jr., his first megaphone.
He used it to amplify the voices of Rosa Parks, who was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white man, and other African-Americans as they boycotted Montgomery, Alabama’s bus system for the freedom to ride without their skin color determining where they sat, or who got to sit down before them.
But now, for many black people in Memphis and throughout the nation, the buses have morphed into symbols of oppression, not freedom.
Oppression in that city buses no longer, or, at least not conveniently, take African-Americans to the jobs that they need to escape the poverty that continues to saddle Memphis with the title of the nation’s poorest large city. They also don’t easily take them to many places they must go to get what they need to simply exist.
For many, those obstacles ultimately prove insurmountable.
And a recent trip with Sammie Hunter, co-chair of the Memphis Bus Riders Union, offered a glimpse into how that could happen.
Hunter, 54, works in the custodial and dietary department of Methodist South Hospital, in Whitehaven off Elvis Presley Boulevard. One afternoon, after leaving work around 2:30 p.m., he boarded a Memphis Area Transit Authority bus at 3:25 p.m. at Faronia Road to ride 5 miles to his home on Applewood Cove south of Memphis International Airport.
Fifteen minutes later, Hunter arrived at his first stop
at Elvis Presley Boulevard — where he walked to another stop at Commerce Parkway. He waited there 20 minutes before boarding another bus to the American Way Transit Center — where he waited another 15 minutes before boarding another bus for a half-hour ride to his last stop at Shelby Drive and Tchulahoma Road. But Hunter’s journey still wasn’t over. From there, he walked a mile — which took 15 minutes and included traversing a muddy field to avoid streets without sidewalks — to get to his house.
So, basically, it takes Hunter 2 from the time he leaves work to travel home. All because he can’t afford a car.
“The scheduling, the times that the buses run, that’s my problem with it,” Hunter said. “There’s a lot of warehouse jobs out near Shelby Drive, but the buses were cut off early …”
Hunter’s experience and observations are backed up in a 2016 transit study by Innovate Memphis. Among other things, it found that “nearly 50 percent of jobs are 10 to 35 miles out, farthest from the poorest residents.”
“People want jobs, they want to make a decent living, but if you can’t provide what they need to make a decent living, if you can’t get to the job, then you can’t do it,” Hunter said.
“Everybody in Memphis can’t afford a car.”
They also can’t do it if, unlike Hunter, they struggle with medical or physical conditions that prevent them from walking a mile to or from a bus stop — something that can even be a challenge to a fit person who must avoid being hit by cars on streets with no sidewalks.
On top of that, if a person must walk a mile to a stop during the darker, wee hours of the morning to make it to a job that starts at 7:30 or 8 a.m., he or she is at a greater risk of being robbed or assaulted. So, many don’t do it. However, solutions exist, such as more feeder routes that could drop passengers off at the main stops they need to reach. More frequent direct routes would also help cut the time it takes people like Hunter to make a 5-mile trip.
But MATA continues to struggle financially, largely because it has no dedicated funding source. And when routes are dropped because not enough people use them, it hurts the people who still must rely on those routes.
“The funding levels that we have to work within don’t allow us to provide enough high-quality, high-frequency public transportation for everyone,” said Gary Rosenfeld, MATA’s chief executive officer.
“No bus system will ever match the efficiency of a car. But there shouldn’t be a 2- or 3-hour penalty for people just because they can’t afford a car.”
On top of that, sparse sidewalks and walkways, such as what Hunter deals with, make it difficult for people to get to stops, Rosenfeld said.
“In addition to not providing enough service, we’ve made it harder for people to use the services that are there,” he said.
So, more than 60 years after the Montgomery bus boycott and 50 years after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis, African-Americans are free to move to the front of the bus.
But now, that victory almost rings hollow, because many continue to be shackled by poverty — the evil that King came to this city to fight — because the jobs that the buses once took many black people to have moved far away from them.
That’s far away from economic opportunity. And even further away from King’s dream.