Month: January 2002

(FIRST APPEARANCE ON WEB JANUARY 14)

The Sports Authority and the Memphis Grizzlies have delivered on their promise to give a hand to prep sports in Memphis.

The Sports Authority announced this week it is confident Memphis will land Spring Fling, the annual spring sportsfest for Tennessee public and

private schools. The event has been held in Middle Tennessee or Chattanooga every year even though Memphis boys and girls have won numerous state championships in baseball, softball, tennis, and track.

Tiffany Brown, managing director of the Sports Authority, said it also will go after the state basketball tournament now held in Murfreesboro. She said it had not been held in Memphis for more than 30 years. The city and county are allowing free use of the Mid-South Coliseum this year for

basketball games in the city championship and regional tournament, “laying the groundwork for us to go after the state tournament,” she said.

In addition to being a neutral court, the Coliseum will accomodate much bigger crowds than any of the high school gyms and should give the

participating schools a pay day of about $6,000 instead of less than $2,000, Brown said.

The deadline to make a bid to the Tennessee Secondary Sports Athletic Association (TSSAA) for Spring Fling 2003 is April 1.

“We’re going to give them a bid they can’t refuse,” said Brown, adding that the Grizzlies have pledged to sweeten it. The package will include hotel rooms, gate receipts, and up to $100,000 to help with travel costs and other expenses. Proposed venues will include the Racquet Club of Memphis, AutoZone Park, Christian Brothers High School and other schools and sports complexes.

The Sports Authority is organizing the effort along with the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau.

(FIRST APPEARANCE ON WEB JANUARY 19)

The other day a friend of mine asked me how I planned to spend Martin Luther King Day. I was a bit taken aback at first; she was the last person I expected would be making plans to honor a slain civil rights leader. Not due to any real deficit in her character, rather as a young, white professional, woman with few ties to the African-American community I didn’t expect her to have given MLK Day much thought.

Turns out I was mostly right.

The next sentence out of her mouth was, “Some friends and I are talking about having a big party Sunday night, since nobody has to work on Monday. Wanna come?”

A few days later another friend (also white) told me that she was planning a champagne brunch for that Monday. So I started thinking about the holiday, and about how “holiday” has become the most appropriate word for it.

Thirty-four years after he was killed, Martin Luther King, Jr. has become, for much of white America anyway, just a good excuse to sleep late. And can you really blame us? What do we know about MLK anyway?

Preacher, civil rights leader, killed in Memphis, Mountaintop, I Have a Dream, the march on Washington, Selma, Bull Connor, and the favorite bulletin board image for elementary school teachers across the nation during Black History Month. That’s about it.

It wasn’t until I got to college and read David Halberstam’s book, The Children, that I first learned about how much of the civil rights movement took place in my hometown of Nashville. Sure, I knew that King was killed in Memphis but nobody bothered to tell me that a). a group called the Freedom Riders existed, and b). it got it’s start in Nashville.

By the time I graduated from high school I could read Latin and speak Spanish. I could recognize and attribute every major work of art from cave paintings to modern sculpture. I had read and could recite many of the great works of literature. I knew all about cell structure and could do some math (not really my strong point, there.) But never once during my otherwise excellent public school education did a single teacher bother to mention the sit-ins, the march in Nashville, the training in non-violence, or the impressive number of present day leaders who cut their teeth during the civil rights movement.

The same is true for Dr. King. I had to read and be familiar with his two most famous speeches but nobody bothered to tell me why he was giving those speeches. I was taught that he had been shot in Memphis, but my text didn’t say why he was in Memphis in the first place. I can’t speak for all products of Tennessee’s public schools, but among the Gen X and Y’ers I hang with – most of us haven’t a clue. So MLK Day this year, like the last few years, will likely just be a holiday that white teenagers and young adults spend sleeping late and getting high.

It’s a convenient holiday for us. One that allows us both a day off from school and work and the moral consolation that we’ve given “them” a day. To brutally paraphrase Austin Powers, we’ve thrown them a friggin’ bone. Because for much of white America, MLK Day is a black holiday, just like Martin Luther King, Jr. was a black leader. It’s the same logic that led city planners nationwide to place Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. in the ghettos, where white people aren’t likely to drive on it.

Before you get all defensive, think about it. Politically we’re only inches more progressive than when King was alive. Sure, African-Americans are no longer barred from water fountains and bathrooms – but is that something to pat ourselves on the backs for? Hardly. It’s time we stop being proud of ourselves for taking the low road. We get no credit for doing what we’re supposed to do – especially when all other choices are morally indefensible.

In Memphis today, we still operate a white school district and a black school district. Call it “city” and “county” if it helps you sleep at night (and promise each the same funding to ease your consciences), but it’s still separate but equal when you boil it down to the bare facts.

Why are we still debating this? Are equal rights and equal access still debatable theories?

Where Memphis should have performed some necessary and painful surgery years ago to solve these problems, we elected instead to just slap band-aid after band-aid over the gushing wounds. Guess what guys, the wounds are still gushing.

City and county consolidation is great start, but a long overdue one that should face no resistance now though it will. County (white) residents don’t want to be combined with city (black) residents. It’s time to call a spade a spade.

But back to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. When President Reagan ushered in the holiday, he introduced America to a “new and improved, kinder and gentler,” King. This one was more mouthpiece than radical leader, a cuddly and faithless teddy bear to spew inspirational (but never challenging) ideas when we decide to pull the string on his back.

We, as white Americans, can use this holiday to console ourselves with our token efforts. “We’ve (so generously, I might sarcastically add) given “them” MLK Day and Black History Month. “They’ve” got BET and the NAACP. Oprah has a TV show, and Colin Powell and Condi Rice have cabinet positions. They’re not slaves, they can vote and (in theory anyway) hold office. What more do they want? some whites seem to be saying.

And in so thinking we once again miss the essence of Dr. King. Go back and read the “I Have a Dream” speech. Better still, go to the National Civil Rights Museum and watch the footage of the speech. King’s dreams were not for black people to gain power – they were for equal access to all non-whites.

Right now, and perhaps moreso than anytime since King’s assassination, we should realize this. It’s very en vogue to waive flags and revel in our new found national unity. We relish the thought of becoming an even greatest-er generation.

But when we as a city and a nation are still debating equal access we’ve hardly achieved unity and the token observance of a holiday won’t change that.

(FIRST APPEARANCE ON WEB JANUARY 15)

On the basis of an autopsy, Shelby County Medical Examainer O.C. Smith ruled out foul play or suicide and issued a “conclusive” finding Monday that the death here last month of Dr. Don C. Wiley, a renowned biochemist, was the result of an accidental fall into the Mississippi River from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.

At a press conference at Memphis police headquarters, Dr. Smith ruled out either foul play or suicide as a cause of the scientist’s death, which occurred in the early morning hours of November 16,. Smith said there was “no pattern of injury suggesting violence” and that “the possibility of Dr. Wiley’s death having been a suicide was carefully considered and rejected.”

Police Director W.A. Crews said his department had been unable to determine the whereabouts of Dr. Wiley between midnight and 4 a.m., when a patrol unit making an hourly check discovered Dr. Wiley’s rented Mitsubishi Galant parked at curbside in a westbound lane of the bridge, keys still in the ignition.

The scientist, who was attending meetings in conjunction with his membership on the St. Jude Children’s Hospital board of directors, had last been seen about midnight, leaving The Peabody downtown in the aftermath of a banquet.

Dr. Wiley’s disappearance — unaccounted for until his body was found last week washed ashore downstream near Concordia, Louisiana — had occasioned widespread media interest, much of it due to the Harvard professor’s international reputation for his research into dangerous viruses, such as those responsible for AIDS, influenza, and Ebola.

Citing damage to both the left and right sides of the Galant, Dr. Smith speculated that Dr. Wiley had grazed a road-construction divider on the driver side of the car, then swerved to curbside with enough force to displace a hubcap on the passenger side.

Smith said Wiley had apparently walked to the right side of the vehicle to inspect the damage there, then somehow fell across a guardrail that was 43 inches above the roadbed, “below Dr. Wiley’s center of gravity,” as the examiner noted.

Dr. Smith’s judgment of accidental death was predicated on the nature of Dr. Wiley’s injuries. A fractured sternum, coincident with a crushed button midway down the scientist’s shirt, suggested to the examiner that Dr. Wiley had frontally encountered the concrete top to a box beam on the outside of the guardrail.

Dr. Wiley’s other injuries, including contusions and a fractured neck vertebra, and fractured ribs, were consistent with the scientist’s impacting the river,135 feet below, on his right side.

From this evidence, Dr. Smith concluded that the scientist had fallen, in that persons jumping from the bridge generally cleared the box beam, which Dr. Wiley had struck with his chest on the way down.

Among the factors that might have contributed both to Dr. Wiley’s traffic mishap and to his subsequent fall, Dr. Smith included the following: “an infrequent and poorly understood seizure disorder” which was experienced by Dr. Wiley “two or three times a year” — one which caused momentary disorientation but not unconsciousness; “fatigue…due to the late hour and long day;” and the presence of alcohol “at levels suggesting impairment.”

Concerning the latter, Dr. Smith stressed that toxicology studies had not been concluded to a point making a judgment about alcoholic intoxication certain and that the levels of alcohol in Dr. Wiley’s body could be due substantially to “fermentation after death coupled with diffusion from the stomach.”

In addition to the potential causes mentioned, Dr. Wiley pointed out the instability of the roadbed on which Dr. Wiley had stood and the further destabilizing effect of passing vehicles, especially the 18-wheelers which frequently cross the bridge in the early morning hours.

Such factors “may have played a role in his [Dr. Wiley’s] going over the rail, more so if he were also impaired or under the effects of a seizure,” said Dr. Smith, who theorized that Dr. Wiley’s unexplained presence on the Hernando DeSoto bridge may have been due to a wrong ramp turn on an Interstate connection downtown.

“He was on his way to West Memphis, and he had no reason to be in West Memphis,” who, along with Directore Crews, fielded some non-medical questions at the press conference.

Dr. Wiley had been staying with his father, who lives in Raleigh, reachable via Interstate 40. A right turn at the downtown connection leads to the bedroom community, while a left turn puts a motorist on a westward course, over the bridge..

The absence of significant water levels in Dr. Wiley’s stomach and lungs was an indication that the scientist died from the impact, not from drowning, said Dr. Smith.

The other day a friend of mine asked me how I planned to spend Martin Luther King Day. I was a bit taken aback at first; she was the last person I expected would make be plans to honor a slain civil rights leader. Not due to any real deficit in her character, rather as a young, white professional, woman with few ties to the African-American community I didn’t expect her to have given MLK Day much thought.

Turns out I was mostly right.

The next sentence out of her mouth was, “Some friends and I are talking about having a big party Sunday night, since nobody has to work on Monday. Wanna come?”

A few days later another friend (also white) told me that she was planning a champagne brunch for that Monday. So I started thinking about the holiday, and about how “holiday” has become the most appropriate word for it.

Thirty-four years after he was killed, Martin Luther King, Jr. has become, for much of white America anyway, just a good excuse to sleep late. And can you really blame us? What do we know about MLK anyway?

Preacher, civil rights leader, killed in Memphis, Mountaintop, I Have a Dream, the march on Washington, Selma, Bull Connor, and the favorite bulletin board image for elementary school teachers across the nation during Black History Month. That’s about it.

It wasn’t until I got to college and read David Halberstam’s book, The Children, that I first learned about how much of the civil rights movement took place in my hometown of Nashville. Sure, I knew that King was killed in Memphis but nobody bothered to tell me that a). a group called the Freedom Riders existed, and b). it got it’s start in Nashville.

By the time I graduated from high school I could read Latin and speak Spanish. I could recognize and attribute every major work of art from cave paintings to modern sculpture. I had read and could recite many of the great works of literature. I knew all about cell structure and could do some math (not really my strong point, there.) But never once during my otherwise excellent public school education did a single teacher bother to mention the sit-ins, the march in Nashville, the training in non-violence, or the impressive number of present day leaders who cut their teeth during the civil rights movement.

The same is true for Dr. King. I had to read and be familiar with his two most famous speeches but nobody bothered to tell me why he was giving those speeches. I was taught that he had been shot in Memphis, but my text didn’t say why he was in Memphis in the first place. I can’t speak for all products of Tennessee’s public schools, but among the Gen X and Y’ers I hang with – most of us haven’t a clue. So MLK Day this year, like the last few years, will likely just be a holiday that white teenagers and young adults spend sleeping late and getting high.

It’s a convenient holiday for us. One that allows us both a day off from school and work and the moral consolation that we’ve given “them” a day. To brutally paraphrase Austin Powers, we’ve thrown them a friggin’ bone. Because for much of white America, MLK Day is a black holiday, just like Martin Luther King, Jr. was a black leader. It’s the same logic that led city planners nationwide to place Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. in the ghettos, where white people aren’t likely to drive on it.

Before you get all defensive, think about it. Politically we’re only inches more progressive than when King was alive. Sure, African-Americans are no longer barred from water fountains and bathrooms – but is that something to pat ourselves on the backs for? Hardly. It’s time we stop being proud of ourselves for taking the low road. We get no credit for doing what we’re supposed to do – especially when all other choices are morally indefensible.

In Memphis today, we still operate a white school district and a black school district. Call it “city” and “county” if it helps you sleep at night (and promise each the same funding to ease your consciences), but it’s still separate but equal when you boil it down to the bare facts.

Why are we still debating this? Are equal rights and equal access still debatable theories?

Where Memphis should have performed some necessary and painful surgery years ago to solve these problems, we elected instead to just slap band-aid after band-aid over the gushing wounds. Guess what guys, the wounds are still gushing.

City and county consolidation is great start, but a long overdue one that should face no resistance now though it will. County (white) residents don’t want to be combined with city (black) residents. It’s time to call a spade a spade.

But back to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. When President Reagan ushered in the holiday, he introduced America to a “new and improved, kinder and gentler,” King. This one was more mouthpiece than radical leader, a cuddly and faithless teddy bear to spew inspirational (but never challenging) ideas when we decide to pull the string on his back.

We, as white Americans, can use this holiday to console ourselves with our token efforts. “We’ve (so generously, I might sarcastically add) given “them” MLK Day and Black History Month. “They’ve” got BET and the NAACP. Oprah has a TV show, and Colin Powell and Condi Rice have cabinet positions. They’re not slaves, they can vote and (in theory anyway) hold office. What more do they want? some whites seem to be saying.

And in so thinking we once again miss the essence of Dr. King. Go back and read the “I Have a Dream” speech. Better still, go to the National Civil Rights Museum and watch the footage of the speech. King’s dreams were not for black people to gain power – they were for equal access to all non-whites.

Right now, and perhaps moreso than anytime since King’s assassination, we should realize this. It’s very en vogue to waive flags and revel in our new found national unity. We relish the thought of becoming an even greatest-er generation.

But when we as a city and a nation are still debating equal access we’ve hardly achieved unity and the token observance of a holiday won’t change that.