MLK50 live blog: Follow events all day long
Storms were in the area 50 years ago when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last speech at Mason Temple.
He was assassinated the next day at the Lorraine Motel.
Storms returned to Memphis on Tuesday night, a half-century after that historic speech.
A cold front came through with thunderstorms and the area also was under a tornado watch, said Jim Branda, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Memphis.
Wednesday’s forecast calls for a mostly sunny day, with a high of 54 degrees.
— Linda Moore
Angela Rye visits 201 Poplar
Angela Rye, a political activist and commentator who unleashed blistering criticism of the city and its leadership in her last visit, returned to Memphis on Tuesday.
Alongside local activist Tami Sawyer, who helped lead a grassroots movement to remove the city’s Confederate monuments, Rye visited the Criminal Justice Center at 201 Poplar, where police had just arrested seven activists protesting an aggressive federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Rye accused city officials of not matching words with actions — something Sawyer said the city is demonstrating again with its arrest of nonviolent protesters.
“This administration has continued to commit to a pictorial commemoration (of Martin Luther King Jr.) — not an actual commemoration,” Sawyer said.
— Ryan Poe
Evangelicals gather, reflect on ‘Mountaintop’
Thousands of evangelicals are in Memphis this week to attend a two-day conference called “MLK50: Gospel Reflections from the Mountaintop.”
The conference began Tuesday afternoon at the Cook Convention Center with a welcome from Gov. Bill Haslam.
“Government is a lot better at fixing potholes than at fixing hearts,” Haslam told an audience of more than 3,500. “That’s why we need the body of Christ to help us.”
The first of several keynote speeches was delivered by Dr. Russell Moore, the controversial president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville. Moore, who has taken some heat for his criticism of candidate and thenPresident Donald Trump, called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “an American prophet.”
Moore compared King to biblical prophets who were honored after they died but reviled when they lived.
“The hatred directed at Dr. King then was not limited to that bullet,” Moore said.
— David Waters
FedEx says protest had no adverse impact
The FedEx Express hub at Memphis International Airport reported no adverse impact from a morning protest by the Concerned Citizens Coalition of Memphis, aimed at what the group described as unfair wages.
The hub employs more than 11,000 people with average starting wages of $13 an hour, and it makes benefits available to all full- and part-time employees, spokesman Jim McCluskey said.
“FedEx is proud of our significant support of MLK50 events in Memphis and other cities as we honor the legacy and of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” McCluskey said. “Diversity and inclusion (are) a continuing, strategic priority for FedEx in our recruiting, hiring, and in our relationships with suppliers and charitable organizations,” he said.
— Wayne Risher
Florida school shooting survivor: ‘Stand up and fight with us’
Mei-Ling Ho-Shing, who survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, told a crowd at an AFSCME/Church of God in Christ event Tuesday that her generation is ready to lead and change the world.
“I am asking you to stand up and fight with us,” she said.
She said she stands “at the intersection of when a predominantly white and wealthy community faces gun violence and when black and brown people are shot and killed on a daily basis.”
“I’m here today because February 14, 2018, was the most terrifying day of my life,” she said. “A man entered my high school with an AR-15 and murdered 17 people, 14 of them my fellow students. He killed my friends. This was the worst day of our lives, and I will do anything I can do to stop it from happening to other people like me.”
— Katie Fretland
NCRM reports 3,400 Monday visitors
The line is never-ending at the National Civil Rights Museum, where nearly 3,400 people visited Monday — when admission was free, thanks to FedEx. Museum officials say they see 1,000 to 1,500 people on an average day.
The NCRM has extended hours this week, closing at 7 p.m. Tuesday and open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday.
— Linda Moore
Corker speaks about equality
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., spoke about King’s vision of equality during a stop at Clayborn Temple on Tuesday.
“The vision of equality is one the whole world can benefit from,” he said. “I’ve been to places, I can assure you, where they are not nearly as advanced as we are, and yet, in so many ways, we’ve got a lot of work to do ourselves. Look, it’s a moment of reflection about who we are and what we aspire to be.”
Corker arrived about 12:30 p.m. at historic Clayborn Temple, the rallying point for Memphis sanitation strikers in 1968, to give the keynote to the Rotary Club of Memphis.
— Ryan Poe
Continuing the war on poverty
As Memphis gears up to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination Wednesday, a national group has announced plans to take up where he left off.
At the National Civil Rights Museum on Tuesday, the Rev. William Barber II, founder of Repairers of the Breach, said the organization would intensify its fight to mobilize people to battle poverty. A report, “The Souls of Poor Folks,” is expected in the coming days.
Barber said the report examines how poor people have fared since 1968, and it will offer strategies on how to fix the problem.
Those strategies include massive voter registration drives for poor people, massive organizing campaigns and “power-building among the poor and dispossessed,” he said.
“This (poverty) is a moral tragedy,” Barber said, flanked by supporters with signs decrying the immorality of poverty.
“Here in America we can buy unleaded gas, but we have places where people can’t get unleaded water,” Barber said.
— Tonyaa Weathersbee
Forrest marker dedication set for Wednesday
A new downtown historical marker that promises to “tell the whole story” about Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Memphis slave trade is set for a Thursday unveiling and dedication.
The marker, at Adams Avenue and B.B. King Boulevard, will explain that Forrest’s primary business enterprise was trading slaves. He did so from the site where the marked will be located.
An earlier marker nearby, erected in 1955, simply said Forrest was wealthy as a result of his business enterprises, but failed to note slavery as the primary enterprise.
The new marker is sponsored by Calvary Episcopal Church, Rhodes College and the National Park Service.
— Ron Maxey