Why Memphis has seen little progress since MLK’s death
A half-century after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while crusading on behalf of poor sanitation workers in Memphis, local childhood poverty and black incarceration rates continue to soar, and the income gap between African-American and white households shows no sign of narrowing.
As panelists in a Tuesday discussion titled “Memphis 50 Years Later/Marching Forward” see it, those conditions didn’t occur by accident. They are rooted in a historic plantation-style economy built on low wages and segregation.
“We need poor people. We don’t want poor people to be educated, we don’t want poor people to have access to decent wages. We attract people here because of that poverty, so...are we really invested in fixing it?” said Charles McKinney, associate professor of history at Rhodes College.
McKinney and four other panelists shared a stage at the University of Memphis to discuss Memphis’ progress — or lack thereof — since King’s assassination on April 4, 1968. The event was part of the National Civil Rights Museum’s two-day MLK50 Symposium.
The panelists spent most of their time outlining the local impediments to equality and fairness — everything from poor public transportation to disparities in school suspension rates to the lack of well-paying jobs.
“We’ve lost so many unions,” said Michael Honey, a professor of the humanities at the University of Washington, Tacoma. “That used to be the entree point for the black middle class.”
The nation’s current leaders, including President Donald Trump, favor low wages, he said, and “want to take us back” to a time when workers had no power or rights.
Wendi Thomas, editor and publisher of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, said her project surveyed the area’s 25 largest local employers as to whether they pay employees a “living wage” — at least $15 an hour — and provide health insurance. Some, including International Paper, and Memphis and Shelby County government, fared well in the survey, she said, but progress remains limited.
“We are making a mockery of King’s legacy if we don’t really wrestle with these things,” said Thomas, a former columnist for The Commercial Appeal.
Elena Delavega, who teaches such courses as Social Welfare Policy and Evaluative Research at the U of M, decried the “unconscionable” rise in local childhood poverty since 1980.
She said African-Americans have made “tremendous gains” in high school graduation and college-attainment rates, but their incomes still are about half that of Caucasians. High incarceration rates block many black men from the job market, Delavega said.
One trend consistent among all races and ethnic groups, however, is a rise in poverty rates. “We’re all doing worse,” Delavega said.
James H. Johnson Jr., a professor and director at the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina, cited a “triplewhammy” of problems, including “hyper-segregation,” facing low-income communities.
Johnson, however, pointed to a possible area of economic opportunity in Memphis: its rapidly aging population, which creates demands for services and construction jobs.
“Everything in the built environment has to change to accommodate an aging population,” Johnson said.
Reach Tom Charlier at thomas. charlier@commercialappeal.com or 901-529-2572 and on Twitter at @thomasrcharlier.