Memphis still dealing with trauma
City restores Clayborn Temple, site of human rights struggle that drew MLK
“Memphis will pay a higher
price than any other city in
the nation for the death of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
The Rev. James Lawson April 1968
MEMPHIS – No city in America was more wounded than Memphis in the crucible of 1968 and its racial, political and cultural upheaval.
Memphis wasn’t merely the scene of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. In many ways, it saw itself as the tragic cause.
“Martin didn’t come here just to support the sanitation strike. He came here to challenge the system – the overt and institutional racism, the economic inequity and exploitation, the political and even religious division that made the strike necessary,” said the Rev. LaSimba Gray, a longtime activist who was a college student in 1968. “That system was responsible for Martin’s death, and it nearly killed Memphis. This city has been struggling for 50 years to overcome that tragic day. In some ways, we’ve made a lot of progress, and in some ways none at all.”
Clayborn Temple, a block south of Beale Street, is emblematic of the city’s 50-year struggle to overcome the trauma of 1968. Once the largest church in the South, Clayborn Temple was the base for striking sanitation workers whose fight for economic justice brought King to Memphis.
Its restoration is part of a multibillion-dollar downtown renaissance that includes the $250 million FedExForum across the street and a $200 million mixed-income neighborhood next door that will replace the city’s last housing project.
In 1968, sanitation strikers and supporters gathered at Clayborn to pass out I AM A MAN signs and march to City Hall to express their grievances and demonstrate their dignity and solidarity.
Clayborn’s backyard includes the new I AM A MAN plaza, dedicated April 4 for MLK50, with a large sculpture of that slogan and a wall bearing the names of 1,300 strikers.
In 1968, protesters sought refuge in Clayborn after one march turned violent. Police followed them inside and assaulted them with clubs and tear gas.
The long abandoned, nearly destroyed limestone landmark is being reclaimed and reimagined as a civic sanctuary, a multiracial, interfaith healing center for the city.
King was scheduled to deliver his “Mountaintop” speech April 3 in Clayborn. A big crowd pushed the rally to larger Mason Temple nearby. The next day, King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel a few blocks away.
Clayborn and the Lorraine – the centerpiece of the National Civil Rights Museum – are national historic sites, venerated spaces for reflection and prayer and symbols of a city’s efforts to learn the lessons of 1968 and overcome its mistakes.
Politicians polarized
In the decade after King’s assassination, the wars of 1968 raged on.
Police spied on civil rights workers, union activists and war protesters until a federal judge put a stop to it in 1978.
“The city’s establishment seemed to be taking revenge on the black community for its powerful community and labor-based movement of 1968,” said Michael Honey, author of “To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice.”
After King was killed, businesses and residents abandoned downtown, citing fears of more racial strife. Landmarks such as the Peabody hotel and Orpheum Theatre were closed. “Urban renewal” demolished entire blocks of Beale. By the end of the 1970s, downtown had lost half its population and was home to more jail inmates than residents.
Thousands of white parents abandoned the city and its school system for the suburbs and private, church-based schools. In 1960, the city’s population was 62 percent white. By 1980, it was 51 percent white. By 1990, Memphis was a majority black city.
King’s assassination “and forced busing four years later were the one-two punch that sent most white Memphians packing,” journalist Otis L. Sanford wrote in “From Boss Crump to King Willie,” a 2017 history of Memphis politics.
After King, Memphis politicians played the race card in nearly every issue and election. Those decisions had lasting consequences, said Aram Goudsouzian, co-editor of “An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee.”
“Rather than channel the tragedy into constructive change, the city’s white leadership used 1968 as a shorthand for racial polarization, which crippled the possibilities for real progress in Memphis,” he said.
Disinvestment, reinvestment
Fifty years after King’s campaign for economic justice ended on a motel balcony, Memphis remains one of the nation’s poorest and most segregated cities.
Four in 10 children live in poverty. Nearly one in five teens and young adults are neither in school nor working – the nation’s highest percentage of “opportunity youth.”
Parts of the city are plagued by blight, crime and persistent income and wealth gaps.
“Poverty is our most serious challenge,” said Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, 40, a Yale-educated lawyer who was elected in August. “We’re focused like a laser on it.”
In recent years, public officials increased spending on minority-owned businesses and raised the minimum wage for local government employees to $15 an hour.
According to BlackTech Week, Memphis is the best city for minority-owned businesses and black entrepreneurs. The ratio of African-Americans with whitecollar jobs has risen from 20 percent to more than 50 percent since 1970. Minority-owned businesses still account for only about 1 percent of gross business revenue.
The black middle class has increased 50 percent since 1960, but the median income for black families has remained about half that of white families. Black high school and college graduation rates are five times higher than in 1968, but the net worth of AfricanAmericans with college degrees is 17 percent of whites.
“The people and organizations in distressed neighborhoods don’t have the capital they need to build equity, to start their own businesses, to transform their own communities,” said Eric Robertson, president of Community LIFT. “We’re talking about the destructive impact of generations of disinvestment.”
‘A vision for economic justice’
The scars of 1968 are still visible. So are the hopes. Downtown has seen an economic and cultural revival, anchored by the renovated Peabody and Orpheum, a rejuvenated Beale Street, a new performing arts center and a minor league ballpark. Downtown’s population has quadrupled since 1980.
The city razed all of its housing projects, driving broader economic development. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is spending a billion dollars to expand its downtown campus.
Outlying neighborhoods have paid for downtown’s boon. Thousands of former public housing residents live in distressed areas targeted by subprime lenders and poorly served by public transit.
King’s mission for social and economic justice has inspired many new ones.
Memphis ranks as the most generous city in the USA, giving $6 of every $100 in earned income to philanthropy. Nonprofit groups and foundations are getting more creative and collaborative, drawing national attention and funding.
“We have a lot of needs, but we address a lot of needs,” said the Rev. Kenneth Robinson, executive director of United Way of the Mid-South.
This year, 50 congregations and nonprofit groups organized to push public officials to do more to address the city’s inequities. They held meetings at Clayborn, Mason and the National Civil Rights Museum.
“Our mission is to find purposeful and practical ways to continue Dr. King’s struggle for racial and economic fairness in the city where he perished,” said Stacy Spencer of the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope.
Last year, the city gave each of the 28 surviving sanitation workers from 1968 a $70,000 tax-free grant.
“It’s imperative that the city of Memphis do the right thing by these men who sacrificed so much on the mission that brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to our city in 1968,” Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said.
In 1968, Memphis sanitation workers made about $1.75 per hour – $12.67 in today’s dollars. Today, they make $17.34 per hour.
Then, sanitation workers had no paid time off and no health insurance, and they could be worked or fired at the will of their bosses. Now they are represented by a union, and they receive all of those benefits and more.
“The sanitation strike highlighted important themes in Memphis history,” said Charles McKinney, a Rhodes College professor and co-editor of “An Unseen Light.”
“It exposed the violent repression that AfricanAmericans often endured,” he said. “It highlighted the expansive and creative ways black activists fought for justice. It underlined the burdens of a political legacy of paternalism and compromise. And it revealed a vision for economic justice.”
That vision brought King to Memphis in 1968. Fifty years later, it remains this city’s ambitious and elusive challenge.