MLK’S ‘lonely island of poverty’ still exists
It was the death that Memphis should have memorialized with a rebirth.
After Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel 53 years ago, Memphis descended into pariahdom by being the place where the civil rights icon was killed.
It fought to escape that. On some levels, it has succeeded – such as creating the Memphis In May International Festival to revive a downtown that was deserted in the years after the assassination.
But the rebirth Memphis needed then – and still needs – must transcend aesthetics to create the reality that King spoke of; a reality that frees Black people here from living “…on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity…”
That lonely island still exists. According to the 2020 Memphis Poverty Fact Sheet, the poverty rate for Black Memphians is 26 percent – nearly three times higher than the poverty rate for white Memphians. As it was in 1970, when the Black poverty rate was 42 percent, that rate remains at least twice as high as the white poverty rate.
“Despite gains in education and increased participation in the white-collar labor market (a 650-percent increase), African Americans still lag behind whites in income and are overrepresented in poverty,” reads 2018’s “The Poverty Report: Memphis Since MLK Jr.”
“Poverty for African Americans in Shelby County is three times that of whites, and median income for African Americans has remained at about half that of whites through the decades.”
The fact that Black people here have gained in education, but the poverty rate remains stubbornly high speaks to a structural racism problem that Memphis has yet to fix.
Sadly, 1968 should have been the year that launched the beginnings of such a fix. When 1,300 sanitation workers, weary of being treated like the trash that they were barely paid to pick up, went on strike, and King came to the city to support them, they should have been greeted with empathy and awareness, not police wielding mace and batons.
And King certainly shouldn’t have been greeted with a bullet to his head.
Yet instead of committing to work together to make the city a more unified, equitable place by living up to the decency espoused by the strikers and King, many white people fled to the suburbs seeking to escape – and were followed by Black people who sought the same resources and amenities that left along with them.
“I think of the failure of political leadership in that moment,” said Aram Goudsouzian, who teaches 20th century American history at the University of Memphis with a focus on civil rights, culture and politics.
“King’s assassination could have been a moment where Memphis could have redefined itself and recommitted itself to becoming a city with good race relations and to finding common ground. Instead, King’s assassination becomes shorthand for everything that falls apart.
“What’s the difference between Memphis and Atlanta in 1968? Not much. What’s the difference between Memphis and Atlanta – the city that found itself too busy to hate – two decades later? A hell of a lot.”
Of course, it’s not too late for Memphis to stop merely commemorating King’s death each year and live up to transforming the city into the prosperous, equitable place that he espoused during his life.
It’s not too late to stop this city from being a place where we remember King’s life at the National Civil Rights Museum each year, where we pay homage to him in the same way we attend church at Easter but forget about it the rest of the year.
“I think there were, and still are, a lot of missed opportunities here,” said University of Memphis history professor Beverly G. Bond, whose research focuses on Memphis history and African American history.
“A lot of Black Memphians and white Memphians have an understanding that things aren’t the way they should be. It can be something as small as driving down Park Avenue down Lamar all the way into Germantown and as I’m driving one stretch out of Memphis, I’m constantly dodging potholes…
“Then when I get to a certain part, on Ridgeway, I notice it’s the same road, but it’s fewer potholes to cross over. Then on the way from Ridgeway further out, you don’t see them.”
In this year, Memphis could commit to a rebirth. So that fewer people remember it as the city where King met his end, but as a place where poverty and inequality meet their end.
Or comes close to it.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Tonyaa Weathersbee at 901568-3281.