Members of Indivisible Memphis, a group that aims to resist President Donald Trump’s administration in West Tennessee, organized the Memphis Resistance Summer Community Cookout, which will be held Saturday, July 1.
The cookout is one of 400 across the country mobilized by the online grassroots organizing group MoveOn.
The group’s website says the cookouts are designed for the millions of Americans that have been peacefully resisting President Trump’s administration since November to come together and celebrate what they have achieved and “recharge for the work ahead.”
The cookout in Memphis is planned for 1:00 p.m. at Audubon Park.
The goals for the cookout, according to Indivisible Memphis’ Facebook page, is networking, recruiting, and “better coordination to electorialize the resistance.”
Three arrest warrants were issued for Jared McLemore in the month after he committed suicide by self-immolation outside a Midtown nightclub on May 13.
According information from shelbywarrants.org, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office Warrant Information System, a warrant was issued for Jared McLemore on the charge of domestic assault-bodily harm on May 12, the day before he publicly killed himself.
McLemore had been harassing his ex-girlfriend, Alyssa Moore, by breaking into her house and assaulting her. He had a long history of violence towards Moore, which led to his arrest on August 16.
The May 12 warrant was issued after several days in which Moore, her friends, and family, had called police reporting McLemore’s threatening behavior. Moore and other people also posted public evidence of McLemore’s threats to kill her and himself on Facebook the week of May 8.
McLemore made good on his threats by dousing himself in kerosene, lighting himself on fire, and attempting to burn down Murphy’s, the club where Moore worked as a sound engineer, by running inside while on fire. The entire incident was broadcast on Facebook Live, where it was viewed by thousands of people.
A second warrant for domestic assault/threat of bodily harm, was issued for McLemore on June 5, 23 days after he died. Then, on June 20, 2017, two more warrants were issued for McLemore on charges of violation of probation.
Paul Garner, who was injured while trying to stop McLemore from lighting himself on fire, said he was first alerted to the new warrants by a friend who subscribes to the Memphis Police Department’s (MPD) Cyberwatch program.
“This just adds insult to injury in a lot of different levels,” Garner said, calling the whole incident “an extreme example of what happens when these systems fail victims.”
Garner contacted Sara Moore, Alyssa’s sister who has been acting as her spokesperson.
“We actually knew about the warrant on June 5,” Sara Moore said. “Alyssa just happened to be looking at her case details on the portal for people who are in the system in connection with ongoing case. At that time, we kind of just brushed it off for our own mental health. This is bizarre, and we don’t understand it, but we’ll just ignore it for our own healing.”
The June 20 warrants prompted the Moore family to contact the media.
[pullquote-1]“At that point, it just seemed so ridiculous and disrespectful, not only to our family, but to Jared’s friends and family that warrants could be issued because a dead man can’t check in with his parole officer,” Sara Moore said.
Moore says her last contact with the police was on or around June 8.
“Two officers showed up to an apartment we shared asking for Alyssa’s GPS device back,” Sara Moore said. “It was to be returned as it was no longer needed by her to be kept safe from Jared. I had to ask the officers who came to our door if there were any updates. They told me no, there were no updates, the case was closed, it was ruled a suicide.”
MPD spokeswoman Karen Rudolph said in an email that she could not address the two probation violation warrants of June 20, because MPD does not issue probation violation warrants. Of the first domestic assault warrant, she said, “the domestic assault warrant was issued on May 12, 2017, the day before the incident occurred involving Mr. McLemore.”
Rudolph did not comment on the June 5 warrant for domestic assault/threat of bodily harm. As of press time, all four warrants were still listed on the shelbywarrants.org portal.
“This is just a more egregious example of too little, too late,” said Sara Moore.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery joined nine other attorney generals and a governor today in sending a letter to President Donald Trump’s administration calling for the end of a program that protects young immigrants from being deported, as well as allows them to work.
The 11 signatories of the letter are demanding that the five-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program be formally rescinded before September 5 of this year or they will challenge the program in court.
In Tennessee, ending DACA would mean the loss of over 8,000 jobs for young immigrants, putting businesses across the state in the position of having to hire and train new employees.
Additionally, according to public policy research organization, the Cato Institute, repealing DACA would result in a $60 billion loss in federal revenue, with a $280 billion reduction in economic growth over the next 10 years.
Youth Organizer with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and DACA recipient Cesar Bautista, says the group will continue to defend the program.
“It is shameful that Attorney General Slatery would join forces with other extremists attorney generals to launch an attack on DACA recipients like me,” Bautista said. “Tennessee is our home, and we will not let our attorney general help deport us. We are here to stay.”
The Memphis music scene surely has its ups and downs, like any city, but sometimes a weekend slate of shows appears that promises one grand-slam band after another, and one is left stunned by the sheer quantity of good music being produced in this city. Here’s a subjective overview of some dynamite LIVE performances you should check out, not mentioned elsewhere in our music column or the Steppin’ Out or After Dark sections. Get up offa that thing! “That thing” being your sofa, where you’ll be tempted to sit with your device of choice while all this swirls around you.
FRIDAY Don Bryant at the Levitt Shell (Free): Don Bryant, soul singer extraordinaire and writer of many great songs for other artists, including wife Ann Peebles, doesn’t play his hometown that often. He’ll be backed by the Bo-Keys and members of the Hi Rhythm Section – truly a Wrecking Crew of our own, here and now in Memphis. Take a blanket, some mosquito repellent, and get outside. (7:30 pm)
Tony Manard CD release party at 831 S. Cooper (Donations accepted): Many bands, finding their favorite clubs booked months in advance now (I told you Memphis was hopping), are experimenting with new, alternative venues. This space is the hallowed ground of our beloved Black Lodge Video, which hosted many a throw-down in its heyday, and now can be rented for parties such as this. Tony is a songwriter and guitarist who you’ve seen in many a Memphis band, most recently the Low Life Leakers super group at the fundraiser for the Victims of the Bowling Green Massacre. His “Know Why” CD has a host of local greats playing behind him, and most of them will be at this show. Jeremy Scott will play a solo set as opener. (8 pm)
The Margins at Murphy’s: Perhaps the city’s best kept secret, the Margins rock minimalist guitar textures and intriguing rhythms for a unique blend that recalls early Wire. They’ll be joined by genre-benders Los Psychosis and that perennial favorite, one man show Johnny Lowebow. (9 pm)
SATURDAY Sweat Fest 3 at the Hi Tone (Free): Shangri-La Records have created a mini-fest of their own in recent years, celebrating the sheer audacity of surviving another Memphis summer. A gaggle of groups always plays, often some of their best shows, because they know record buyers are the best listeners. This year’s Sweatfest will make summer more survivable than ever, as it’s being held inside the Hi Tone rather than the store parking lot. But never fear! Crates upon crates of records will be toted by the Shangri-La minions into the club, so the deals can be had by all. This is the lineup:
2:00 pm: CROCKETT HALL
2:50 pm: TURNSTYLES
3:40 pm: WOOLLY BUSHMEN
4:30 pm: CRYSTAL SHRINE
5:30 pm: YESSE YAVIS
NOTS Homecoming at Bar DKDC: The NOTS have just completed a tour of Europe. This band, already incendiary, have surely benefited from what all bands know as Post-tour Peak Performance Potential. If you liked them already, or even if you were just NOTS-curious, this is a must: they will surely be firing on all cylinders with this triumphant return. (10:30 pm)
SUNDAY Snowglobe at the Harbert Avenue Porch Show (Donations accepted): This venerable group make a rare appearance at what has become an annual tradition. Since 2012, Robert Jethro Wyatt has been the curator of performances on his front porch, complete with free beer. And he knows how to pick ’em: members of Snowglobe have gone out into the world seeking their fortunes since they formed in the 1990s. So it’s a special treat for fans to see them reunited. Did we ever imagine we would be nostalgic for the 90s? Well, we are. (6 pm)
Jack Oblivian at Bar DKDC: What more can be said of Jack O? Have they named a drink after him yet? He’s a seasoned observer of humanity in his witty, bristling songs, no matter what band is backing him. Now with longtime comrades-in-arms The Sheiks, he’s playing old favorites and material from last year’s stunning “The Lone Ranger of Love” . A new project by Graham Winchester and Seth Moody, Turnstyles, will be opening the set, so arrive early for something fresh on the scene. (10 pm)
Your PeskyFly was considering a soft-core parody of Tennessee’s puritanical, porn-busting gubernatorial candidate Sen. Mae Beavers. The premise: Me and May would destroy millions of innocent young lives with passionate acts of slippery abandon. Awesome so far, right? Catch was, I couldn’t come up with the right title. Should it be Around the World with Mae Beavers? 69 Things I Know About Mae Beavers? Strangers in a Strange Beaver? Butt Slammers Vol. 4? So many choices, none of them quite right.
Like they say, when you snooze you lose. While I was dithering, some industrious person was busy crafting a Mae Beavers parody that’s so much better than anything I might have come up with because, presumably, this call’s coming from inside “the House.”
Artist’s fantasy.
The entire text, typos and all, as originally shared by the Nashville Scene.
How to be The Ultraconservative Candidate
Nothing is more important when running for office in Tennessee than getting the conservative vote – and it is the ultraconservative who will probably win the election. So how can you appear to be the ultraconservative candidate?
Preeminence: Make yourself the preeminent conservative in the state. Remember, it is a competition, and by passive aggressively one-upping all other politicians, you can appear to be really nice but in reality, you are crushing the reputations and political futures of potential opponents. Which is good to do because self-centered, attention-grabbing is a useful skill to ensure your future political success.
Secure your superiority through negative contrasting; unnecessarily make comparisons that negatively contrast other elected officials with you. This will present you in the most positive light. Should an official try to claim that they are conservative, what they are really doing is claiming to be more conservative than you. Put an end to this by calling them a RINO, and inferring that they secretly support an income tax.
The key to being the preeminent conservative is control. Control is the glue that holds conservatives who lack critical thinking skills together. It is also a passive aggressive technique you can use against other Republicans; it is really the best way to ensure that you receive the constant attention and admiration from the public that you deserve.
Remember, being in office for 25 years doesn’t mean you are an establishment politician as long as you always call other conservatives who have been in office for a shorter amount of time than you establishment politicians. This helps you assert your dominance in the lives of everyone around you, and dominance helps to improve your life. If anyone doubts you, simply recite your impossible dogmatic standards or your rabid deep-seated feelings of victimization.
Public Speeches: Supplying detail in your public speeches is bad, and may cause you to have to answer actual questions; so speak in vague generalities and platitudes at all times. People will read between the lines and respond with total adoration and obedience. If political insecurities necessitate wild claims about ISIS infiltration or constituents – sweep the room for mics first.
Be sure to call all other Republicans RINOs, that way these officials will learn that they have done something wrong, and because you should be speaking in vague generalities, people will just assume you are the only real conservative without any way to actually measure. They will also believe that all other legislators are simply RINOs at the core of their being.
Further, each time you make negative accusations about the legislature, it is encouragement for them to be more conservative.
Statesmanship: Emphasizing your own statesmanship through snarky comments has the added benefit of shaming other legislators – communicating your own statesmanship through misdirected shame is a direct way to communicate that you are preeminent, and don’t forget – they deserve it.
Legislation: Be legislatively savvy. File bills that appear so conservative that they are actually unconstitutional. Then issue a press release that takes advantage of the blind support of people who don’t know the difference. Insist on running these bills in committee; when the Attorney General opines that the bill is constitutionally suspect this is your big chance to issue a second press release that labels the AG and your Republican colleagues as RINOs – which makes you appear to be the only real conservative in the legislature.
Paint your record as something completely different than what it is. Your oath to uphold the Constitution should never get in the way of your own narcissistic desire for preeminence. Only a true freedom fighter would file an unconstitutional bill, and your refusal to fix your bill by making it constitutional can easily be justified by a plain folks’ appeal that encompasses name calling and proper over simplification of the actual legal issues.
Never let anyone else’s conservative efforts be good enough for you. Remember, if another legislator asks for your support for their ultraconservative idea, they’re not trying to be friendly, they are trying to overthrow your tyrannical reign of control and dominance. You can’t let that happen. You’ll want to play the trump card of filing a nearly identical bill, except, make it a little more outrageous. Then issue a press release containing a directly indirect passive aggressive message that the first legislator has stolen your work. This clearly puts you back in the driver’s seat.
This technique works for dead ultraconservative bills too. If another legislator’s ultraconservative measure died because it came smack dab up against legal realities, you can steal that bill next year and announce to the world that because that legislator was such a RINO and pathetically decided not to get the job done, you will justly assume your natural position of conservative preeminence. When you come up against the same issues as the prior legislator, you can thoroughly enjoy the renewed sense of purpose that floods into your life while you sit on top of your moral high ground calling the committee members who can’t vote for your unconstitutional bill RINO’s.
Budget: Take advantage of the fact that the state budget is so large that no one can possibly know off hand all that it contains. This fact alone creates a lot of suspicion and skepticism among ultraconservatives. In this way, year after year, you can receive statewide attention for being the lone conservative vote against the budget. When media ask why you voted no, supply a simplistic platitude, “There is too much pork in that budget”, an explanation so simple that even a democrat can understand. Pork works because people identify pork with fat, and fat makes people think of indulgence and waste.
Supreme Court: Ignoring Supreme Court cases that have already been decided is another good way to lock down your support from a statewide ultraconservative base while at the same time unmistakably signal your disrespect for the judiciary.
Security: You are entitled to your feelings of needing special treatment, and requiring security makes you appear important enough to protect. But what if no one has actually threatened your life? No problem – your paranoia can assist you in just making something up. Also, by pleading, a wealthy conservative businessman is likely to pay for you to have the constant presence of security whenever you are out in public – this has the added benefit of making you look really important and worthy of protection.
Look the Part: Drive a conservative vehicle. It may be tempting to develop a Lexus nexus with other candidates but that’s really sketchy and y’all in Tennessee … a pickup truck is your best bet.
The Constitution: If you’ve gotten this far, understanding constitutional facts isn’t necessary for you so don’t spend any time on this subject. You’ll want to spend most of your time creating new unconstitutional bills that appear ultraconservative but in reality, will rigidly control people’s lives or help them to realize that they are going to spend eternity in hell.
Since being an ultraconservative is a political philosophy that doesn’t have an actual platform or rule book, you don’t need to know what constitutes an ultraconservative and neither does anybody else. This also means that you have zero knowledge of what may or may not be constitutional in your ultraconservative sense. But don’t worry about that, to fill this small little loop-hole, you only need to publicly preach with conviction that any views you hold are truly ultraconservative, and if anyone else who may actually know something about the constitution raises the specter that you are incorrect, it will be crystal clear that they are actually a RINO and you can call them out on that fact.
These suggestions are a really good start towards your goal of ultraconservative preeminence. Good luck with your political future.
Ah yes, we meet again, Michael Bay, my old nemesis. My Nemesis Prime, you might say. That’s what hero truck-bot Optimus Prime changes his name to when he turns evil in Bay’s latest bit of deviltry, The Last Knight. …
*sigh*
Okay look, y’all. I gotta be honest. My heart’s not really in this. I know, I love writing a good Michael Bay takedown as much as you like reading them — probably more, if I’m being honest. I’ve been doing them for years. Back in the day, Chris Herrington, the Flyer‘s former film editor, would assign me to do the Michael Bay movies, because he knew I hated them. I’ve had a Michael Bay-sized chip on my shoulder since 1998’s Armageddon. How do you mess up a movie about heroic astronauts trying to save the earth from an asteroid? There were so many ways. Then there was Pearl Harbor. How do you mess that up? This is the film where Ben Affleck gets on a train to go from New York to London, neither of which is anywhere NEAR Pearl Harbor.
I include that tidbit in every Michael Bay review, because I still haven’t gotten over it.
And now, another Transformers movie. The fifth one. Giant Robots Go to England. At least they don’t take a train.
I don’t think Michael Bay’s heart is in it any more, either. Back when he had Will Smith and Martin Lawrence demolishing Haitian neighborhoods in Bad Boys 2, at least he seemed like he was having fun with it. In the nonsensical opening scene — in which it is revealed that the secret to King Arthur’s success turns out to be, you guessed it, Transformers — Merlin (Stanley Tucci) takes a big swig of whiskey before staggering into a crashed alien spaceship to forge an alliance with a giant robot. It has the feeling of a confessional moment for Bay: Oh boy. Here we go again. …
Heavy metal — as in considerably cumbersome CGI depictions of giant robots turning into other things.
Bay’s been watching Game of Thrones and obviously missing the point. You like flawed characters caught in impossible situations making hard choices? How about a bored looking Markey Mark just kind of floating through the frame while animated piles of scrap metal scrape together in the background? To say Mark Wahlberg is phoning it in overstates his engagement. Wahlberg is leaving a voicemail for the audience. He was hoping you wouldn’t pick up.
As a longtime Bay watcher, he’s always been indifferent to the audience’s suffering, but in last year’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, I detected something new: a seething resentment of the audience. The Transformers Reaction Force, a special forces group led by Santos (Santiago Cabrera), who can’t seem to decide what side he’s on, seems imported from that movie. It’s like Bay’s sneering misogyny, evident in his treatment of Vivian Wembley (Laura Haddock), the Oxford English Lit professor who can’t seem to speak in complete sentences, has been extended to the entire world. Our alleged hero Cade speaks in Trumpian word salad, insulting any and everyone he comes into contact with. For Bay, there’s only one use for words: busting chops. Expressing dominance.
There’s a general shoddiness to the whole endeavor. A Goonies-like group of kids is introduced early, only to just wander off without explanation. Bay has always had a knack for explaining things that didn’t need explaining and not explaining big things like, “Where did those five kids go? Did they die in the robot apocalypse along with the tens of millions others alluded to but never seen?” The same stock footage of fighter planes peeling off to attack is used over and over again in the final battle, which itself is inexplicably ripped off from last year’s epic flop Independence Day: Resurgence.
“It’s just big, dumb fun!” might be a valid defense against my half-hearted critical barbs, except for one thing: No one is having any fun, least of all Michael Bay. It’s not even fun to hate-watch Transformers: The Last Knight. At this point, even writing this review feels like enabling bad behavior. As a three-headed robot dragon swoops in, breathing fire, King Arthur screams, “This is what the end looks like!” And I can only say I hope so.
This Saturday, Growlers will host a bona fide indie-rock icon when Spiral Stairs – aka Scott Kannberg, singer/guitarist in Pavement and Preston School of Industry – rolls through town in support of his latest record, Doris and the Daggers. The show will also be a homecoming of sorts for two Memphis musicians – Snowglobe members Tim Regan and Luke White, who have been playing in Spiral Stairs’ band on this tour. Spiral Stairs spoke to the Flyer from the road this week about his new album, Pavement reunions, working with Regan and White, and more.
The Memphis Flyer: It’s been eight years since your last album, The Real Feel. What have you been up to?
Spiral Stairs: I met a girl from Australia. Got married, moved to Oz. Had a kid. Tended a veggie patch, mowed my lawn. Life stuff. Moved to LA, drove around a lot. Made up some great songs. Oh, and Pavement reunited!
What inspired you to finally get back in the studio?
I was ready again. It takes me awhile. I meant to do it earlier but the kid was funner. And I wanted to be prepared.
There seem to be a lot of new wave elements – rhythms, synths, chunky guitars – on this record. Where does that influence come from?
I grew up on new wave. Devo was the first band I saw live in 1980. Also I did a bit of production with Kelley Stoltz, who is so new wave it hurts. He did most of those sounds.
What made you decide to start using the name Spiral Stairs?
I did The Real Feel under the Spiral name in 2009. It felt like the time for a change. New players and a new vibe. Older and wiser.
How did you get hooked up with Tim and Luke? What do you like about playing with those guys?
Lovely gentlemen, and sick musos. Tim runs Nine Mile, which put out the record, and tries to manage me at times – which he does an amazing job considering all the stuff he does. I don’t see how he has the time to sleep. Luke came highly recommended and has some licks. Now I want him to start doing more kicks!
Looking back on the Pavement reunions, how do you think they went? Is it something you would want to do again?
Yes. Of course! It was so fun and amazing to see how our band made people happy! Hopefully in a couple years!
How much of your back catalog are you playing on this tour? Should folks expect to hear Preston School of Industry and Pavement songs?
We try to do it all! Lots of Pavement for sure! Those songs are really fun to play!
What do you remember about recording Wowee Zowee (1995 Pavement album) at Easley-McCain? Did y’all have a good time in Memphis?
Soul Food! Easley’s was great, such a good vibe. And Doug and Davis were the best! I can’t wait to go back to Payne’s. I wish the Grifters and Guided By Voices would play again!
Spiral Stairs will appear at Growlers on Saturday, July 1 at 9 p.m. with special guests BOINK and Carson McHone. Admission is $10.
We were honored to present the life and achievements of Dr. Herman Green in this week’s cover story. Here we present a playlist to accompany Dr. Green’s life in music. While much of his work was never recorded, such as his years leading the house band at the the legendary Blackhawk jazz club, a few snippets here and there can give us an idea of his milieu. But before we jump into Dr. Green’s accomplishments, let’s go way back to his roots: the W.C. Handy band, of which Green’s father, Herman Washington, Sr., was a member. While we don’t know if Washington was on this recording, here’s a taste of that Handy sound:
A Herman Green playlist (11)
Cut to 1945, and a 15-year-old Herman Green begins playing with Rufus Thomas, Jr. on Beale Street. Those rowdy talent shows and revues weren’t recorded, but a few short years later, Rufus made some recordings at Sun Studios, with his young protege on sax, and those were released on Chess Records. No doubt Thomas’ sound had become a little more ‘modern’ by then, but these are some fine blues and R&B sides:
A Herman Green playlist (2)
A Herman Green playlist (2)
A Herman Green playlist (3)
Shortly after starting on Beale Street, Rufus Thomas recommended Green to a young, aspiring blues man named Riley B. King when he was putting together a band. B.B. King and Green played together for years, until Green joined up with a “bally troupe” and took to the road. After Green left Memphis, King began a recording career that would make him an international star. Here are his first recordings.
Herman Green didn’t make these sessions, but these sides, recorded by Sam Phillips, give you a taste of how he sounded in 1949. As King told Blues Access magazine, “My very first recordings [in 1949] were for a company out of Nashville called Bullet, the Bullet Record Transcription company,” King recalls. “I had horns that very first session. I had Phineas Newborn on piano; his father played drums, and his brother, Calvin, played guitar with me. I had Tuff Green on bass, Ben Branch on tenor sax, his brother, Thomas Branch, on trumpet, and a lady trombone player.”
The Phineas Newborn, Sr., band was a fixture on the local scene back then, all of them close associates of Herman Green. Here’s the sound of Memphis, ca. 1949, and that lady on trombone sure can blow!
A Herman Green playlist (12)
A Herman Green playlist (13)
While the above sessions were going down, Herman Green was very likely touring the East Coast and Canada. When he’d had enough of that, he landed in New York for a spell. Practically as soon as he arrived, he attended a jam session at Birdland hosted by Sonny Stitt and Art Blakey. Here’s a Sonny Stitt record from 1950. Although Green never recorded with Stitt, this is a taste of what he walked into when he visited Birdland for the first time:
A Herman Green playlist (7)
After leaving New York, being drafted into service in Korea, and finally returning stateside, Herman Green settled in as leader of the house band at the Blackhawk. No recordings (that we know of) exist of this period of Herman’s life, but here’s a taste of Miles Davis and his touring band (not including the house band or Herman) playing that legendary club a few years later. Soak in the murmur of the crowd, the sound of the room, and you can almost taste the cocktails and smell the smoke.
A Herman Green playlist (13)
By the late fifties, Green had joined Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra. Fortunately, we do have some of their performances from his time on record. Here are a couple from 1960-61, live at the Metropole in New York. Herman Green is listed in the orchestra credits. Is that him taking those sizzling sax solos?
A Herman Green playlist (4)
A Herman Green playlist (5)
By the end of the sixties, Green had left Lionel Hampton and settled back in Memphis for good. Playing many sessions in the hopping recording scene back then, he also quietly pursued his love of jazz. You can find some CD’s of his band, The Green Machine, though little of it exists on YouTube. But here’s a little gem of Green and colleagues blowing on Monk’s “Round Midnight”. An informal, loose session, it captures what happens when jazz players just want to play, for whoever may show up:
A Herman Green playlist (8)
By 1987, Herman Green had helped to found the band Freeworld, and he’s been playing with them ever since. Here’s a tune he wrote and recorded with them in 1996, from the album You Are Here. That’s Green on flute.
A Herman Green playlist (9)
Green still plays Beale Street every week with Freeworld. We’ll wrap things up with a little taste of how it sounds when he steps up to the mic. It’s a bit stunning to think that he could have been playing this very song when he first stepped on a Memphis stage in 1945. And it would have been every bit as bawdy…
As Memphis prepares for a 4th of July weekend, members and guests of the Memphis chapter of the NAACP are still savoring some moments last weekend from the organization’s centennial anniversary luncheon — particularly from keynoters Melissa Harris-Perry, former MSNBC host and Wake Forest professor, and Harold Ford Jr., the onetime Memphis congressman who now works on Wall Street and keeps his hand in politically, also on MSNBC.
There were notable things happening before keynoters Harris-Perry and Ford took their star turns, of course. Local NAACP president Deidre Malone and MC Mearl Purvis kept things moving from the dais, and a series of local dignitaries, including Ford’s successor, current 9th District congressman Steve Cohen and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, had some trenchant things to say — Cohen about the perils of the Trump presidency, Strickland about the need to boost African Americans’ share of local business opportunities.
Arguably, though, the best crowd reaction early on was to remarks by longtime civil rights activist Jocelyn Wurzburg, JB
Melissa Harris-Perry
who (along with Shannon Brown and Roquita Coleman-Williams) was one of three official co-chairs for the event, held at the East Memphis Hilton last Saturday and devoted to the theme “Reflecting on the Past, Remaining Focused on the Future: 100 Years of Civil Rights and Human Rights Advocacy.”
Wurzburg, recipient of numerous citations and the person for whom Tennessee Human Rights Commission’s annual Civil Rights Legacy award was named, conflated two tales. The first was about being embarrassed in her early youth when her mother, without asking, signed her up as a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy; the second detailed her response, during a visit to New Orleans, when a resident of that city lamented Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s recent removal of Confederate memorials, including a statue of Robert E. Lee.
The New Orleans native insisted that Lee had been done an injustice, in that the Civil War, in which he led a Southern army, had not been done on behalf of slavery. Wurzburg countered that, “as a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, I can assure you it was.”
Harris-Perry, utilizing her erstwhile media chops, would wow the NAACP audience with a deceptively stream-of-consciousness rendition, including flamboyant hand-and-arm gestures, of what was actually a tightly organized dramatic presentation, aptly illustrated by a series of slides.
And along with her mastery of the medium (two actually; that of television and that of the lecture hall) came several provocative messages. One was both powerful and original: Taking off from her declaration that America had elected a president who was both “a racist and a pussy-grabber,” she formulated a convincing argument that racial domination, in its various forms, had depended on a distinctly physical domination of black women.
Slavery, which had involved the calculated and merciless separation of children from their mothers, had continued “through us,” Harris-Perry declared. To maintain the current stratified social system, she suggested, “Black women have to give birth,” and thereby to yield up to others “not only the product of our labor but our labor….The people who run this joint are pussy-grabbers.” That, she said, was “the reality of our wombs.”
Noting the incidence of black domestic servants in her paternal ancestry visi-a-vis the fact that her mother’s side was white and relatively privileged, Harris-Perry identified strongly with the former and with the idea of building “from the bottom,” a moral that she said would apply both to the advancement of the NAACP and the redevelopment of a dilapidated Democratic Party. “You always have to start with the least of these, literally, Jesus said. If you start at the top, you will miss so much. If you start at the bottom, you will miss nothing.”
Harris-Perry was the proverbial Hard Act to Follow, but Ford, who came next and last, managed to do just fine.
Harold Ford Jr.
Professing that he was “glad to be home,” the former 9th District Congressman (who came within an ace of winning a Senate seat as a Democrat in 2006) executed an artful segue from Harris-Perry. Elaborating on the theme of “the power of women,” he recalled the importance of women teachers in his early education, extolled the helpful role played by “women in this district” in the development of his political career, and did some verbal doting on his 4 ½-year-old daughter Georgia.
Ford then shifted to the subject of change and to what he saw as a geometrically increasing demand for it in the society of today, treating the abrupt shift by American voters to Obama in 2008 and, even more precipitously, to Trump in 2016 as a case in point. The silver lining was the fact, as he saw it, that yet another political shift in a wholly different direction could happen, and relatively quickly.
“People want change, and they want it now,” he said, noting the pell-mell transformations of public technology, like the ever-escalating rise in photography via cell phone. He recalled being told two years ago that, within five years from that point, “97 percent of all the pictures in the world” would have been taken.
Ford closed on a note of optimism: “We’ve got to be daring and not afraid of change.” He quoted Babe Ruth to the effect that “Yesterday’s home runs do not win tomorrow’s ball games.”
The Memphis Medical District Collaborative (MMDC) launched a “vision zero” campaign this week that aims to completely eliminate pedestrian fatalities in the Medical District by 2020.
Similar to other vision zero initiatives across the country, the Be Aware campaign, which is the first of its kind in the Mid-South, is built on five core principles: engineering, education, engagement, enforcement, and equity.
Program associate of MMDC Larissa Thompson says of all the core principles, equity is the most important.
“Equity is an overriding principle that informs all of our decisions about this work,” Thompson said. “We know that the pedestrians in Memphis who are at the greatest risk are mostly people of color and particularly young people.”
The Be Aware campaign comes as response to Memphis being named the ninth most dangerous metropolitan area in the county for pedestrians in a report done last year by Smart Growth America.
“Pedestrian safety is integral to creating a walkable and dynamic district,” MMDC program director Abby Miller said. “We want to create a culture here that reminds us that everyone walks at some point in his or her day. Protecting pedestrians is an issue that affects everyone and the solution will need to include everyone.”
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