Month: October 2020

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News News Blog

Tennessee Early Vote Turnout “Smashes” Record

Tennessee Secretary of State

In 11 days, more than 1.8 million Tennesseans voted early, a turnout that “smashes” the state’s early voting record for turnout.

Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett said when polls closed Monday, 1,808,546 voters had cast ballots ahead of Election Day on November 3rd. The number beat the previous record set during the 2016 presidential election when 1,689,989 voters cast early ballots.  

Monday’s total shows an average of 164,413 Tennessee voters casting ballots each day. Should that average carry on through Thursday, more than 2.3 million Tennessee voters will have voted early this year.

“This election, Tennesseans are engaged and are taking advantage of the convenience of early voting,” Hargett said in a statement. “In the final days of early voting as well as on election day, Tennesseans can cast their votes in clean, safe, and secure environment.”

The final day of early voting is Thursday. Election day is Tuesday.

To find more information about voting in Tennessee (hours, polling places, and more), find the GoVoteTN app in the App Store or on Google Play. Also, check GoVoteTN.com.

Hargett’s office said while voting, Tennesseans are encouraged (not mandated) to wear a face covering and maintain a six-foot distance from poll officials and other voters.

Tennesseans must bring valid photo identification to cast their ballot. For more information about what types of ID are acceptable can be found on sos.tn.gov or by calling toll free 1-877-850-4959.

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News News Blog

Virus Cases Rise by 2,000 in One Week

COVID-19 Memphis
Infogram

Virus Cases Rise by 2,000 in One Week

New virus case numbers rose by 211 over the last 24 hours, putting the total of all positive cases in Shelby County since March at 37,004. That figure topped 35,000 one week ago.

Total current active cases of the virus — the number people known to have COVID-19 in the county — fells slightly from yesterday to 2,907. The figure rose above 2,000 just last week. The figure had been as low as 1,299 last month. The new active case count represents 7.9 percent of all cases of the virus reported here since March.

The Shelby County Health Department reported that 2,524 tests were given in the last 24 hours. Tests here now total 544,443.

The latest weekly positivity rate surged more than 1 percent from the week before.The average rate of positive tests for the week of October 11th was 7.3 percent. That’s up over the 6 percent rate recorded for the week of October 4th. The new weekly average rate is the highest since mid-August, just as cases began to fall from a mid-July spike that had a weekly average positive rate of 12.7 percent.

Total deaths rose by three in the last 24 hours and now stand at 569. The average age of those who have died here is 73, according to the health department. The age of the youngest COVID-19 death was 13. The oldest to die from the virus here was 100.

There are 7,735 contacts in quarantine.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Be Best!

It’s the Flyer‘s annual Best of Memphis issue. Cynics among you might say being the best of anything in 2020 is like being named least homely stray dog at Memphis Animal Services. But they would be wrong. There truly is a lot to be grateful for in this seemingly unending stretch of masked weeks and days. We Memphians, along with millions of other Americans, are the living embodiment of the old cliché: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Thousands of us — businesses large and small, organizations, nonprofits, families, and individuals — have struggled and experimented and tried to learn how to adapt and scrap and hustle in order keep the bills paid, to keep some sort of revenue coming in, to survive until better times return. We’ve innovated; we’ve created hundreds of new side-hustles; we’ve found new opportunities in the darkest hours and the oddest places. We’re doing our Best.

Those of us who are lucky are getting by — juggling childcare, education, work, and tight financial straits, though there’s no clear end in sight. We’re working from our kitchens and bedrooms and dens. We’re spending hours staring at computer screens filled with our co-workers’ faces in little boxes, like some Bizarro World version of Hollywood Squares. We’re living in Zoomland! We’re making plans, discussing business, and talking smack on Slack.

Millions of Americans and thousands of Memphians are now “front-line” workers — keeping food and supplies on the shelves of our stores, teaching our children, carrying our mail, delivering our packages, treating the sick and dying in our hospitals. Thousands of people working behind cash registers and steering wheels and server aprons are risking their health to pay their bills, to feed and shelter their families. They wear masks because they come in contact with hundreds of people and are exposed to the virus on a daily basis.

They deserve our respect and gratitude — respect we show by wearing masks to help protect them and their families. It’s the Best thing we can do, and millions of us are doing it — something that visibly demonstrates that we Americans, we Memphians, are still capable of caring for others, still capable of working together for the common good.

We’re living through a sea-change year, one that will be examined and analyzed in future history books. Was 2020 the end of a short, strange, scary, and aberrant era? Or was it the beginning of the country’s descent into even more chaos and disruption and tribal antipathy? With any luck, we will know a week from now. And frankly, given how 2020 has gone thus far, we are way overdue for some luck.

Either way the presidential election goes, the remaining two months of 2020 will likely be very difficult. President Trump will remain in office until January, at least, meaning there will probably continue to be very little national leadership on tackling the coronavirus, which is surging again. If Trump loses the election, God knows what kind of chaos will be unleashed from the White House in the next two months. I can’t imagine it will be pleasant. The best scenario is that he’ll just go play golf. We can always hope.

If the Senate flips blue, the current Senate will have little incentive to do anything proactive about the virus — or anything else — and will probably just leave the whole mess — COVID, deficit, healthcare — for the next Senate to deal with. Mitch McConnell will go home, count his money, and ponder what it means to turn blue.

The holidays are coming, traditionally a time for getting together with our families — for children, parents, grandparents, and others to gather around the dinner table, to hug and tell stories, to give thanks for another year. That won’t happen for a lot of us in 2020. Traveling around the country will be difficult and even dangerous, particularly for older folks. Cramming a dozen people from all over into a single room is playing with fire. If you’re going to do it, get everybody tested first, unless you want to remember 2020 as Meemaw’s last Christmas.

Those 225,000 COVID deaths (and counting) have touched the lives of millions of Americans, when you consider that most of those who’ve left us had friends and family who cared about them and who will miss them, especially as the holidays come around. It will be up to all of us to honor their memory by being our Best selves, by doing whatever we can to get all of us — even those whose politics we don’t share — through this strange year, this strange time.

Love each other. This will end. Be Best.

Categories
News News Feature

How Do Presidential Elections Affect Your Investments?

Election Day — Tuesday, November 3rd — is almost upon us! After a long, unique campaign during the COVID pandemic, Americans who exercise their right to vote are choosing a president, senators, congresspersons, and a whole host of local politicians. Let’s hope we know the results on November 4th!

How will the election impact your long-term investments? Much speculation has been bandied about how the U.S. stock market will react. Pundits on the various business television channels (and Cheddar) are gaining PR exposure by making their own predictions of coming stock market gains or losses post-Election Day. Of course, many of these prognosticators are primarily seeking attention, so the more extreme their views, the more likely their comments will be promoted and shared.

This chart quantifies how much $100 invested in the total U.S. market on the Election Day would have grown during the terms of the last 12 past presidents.

Should long-term investors worry about this chatter? Many of us have passionate opinions about our political choices, but should we act on our convictions when it comes to election-influenced short-term volatility in the stock market?

It may come as a surprise to know, according to Forbes magazine research, stock market returns for the six Democratic presidents since 1952 have averaged 10.6 percent/year versus 4.8 percent/year for seven Republican presidents.

Richard Nixon and George W. Bush really brought the Republican average down with cumulative losses of 20 percent and 40 percent, respectively. In the Nixon years, stagflation took hold — high inflation, slow growth, and high unemployment. The stock market fell 50 percent from the beginning of 1973 to two months after his resignation due to the Watergate scandal. Bush’s term started with the dot-com bust and ended with the financial crisis — the “lost decade” for the U.S. stock market.

Investors profited during the eight-year terms of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan (from best to fourth best) as economic recoveries and expansions took hold.

Back to our question. Should long-term investors care about short-term volatility that often surrounds a presidential election? Stock markets over the long term reflect the growth and profitability of public corporations. Corporations have a long, successful history of adjusting to changing tax, regulatory, and global trade policies. This will continue to be the case for the 2020 presidential election and those to come.

Therefore, vote for the values and leadership for which you are passionate. Whatever the outcome, according to Forbes research, take comfort that the “buy and hold” investment strategy is the best policy for the long-term investor.

Carol Lee Royer, CFP, CFA, CDFA, is senior vice president and senior wealth strategist for Waddell & Associates.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Outdoors Inc. Hosts Grit & Grind Gravel Grinder

CREDIT: Facebook/Outdoors Inc.

I guess the cat’s out of the bag — or rather, the bike’s out of the shop. Outdoors Inc. showed up in a big way for the Best of Memphis awards. The local sporting goods store took awards for Best Local Athletic Goods Store and Best Bicycle Shop. No wonder, with great events like the Grit & Grind Gravel Grinder.

On Sunday, get revved up and ready to bike a pancake-flat course that will be fast and rideable. With a mix of asphalt, gravel, and dirt, be ready to get muddy if it rains. You should be in the clear though. By all accounts, the weather is supposed to be a cool 67 degrees with cloud cover.

Facebook/Outdoors Inc.

“I want to ride my bicycle — I want to ride my bike!”

While the course is currently being updated, Outdoors Inc. says, “The newly improved gravel is complete and looks good. It will be even better with a little time. The race course [this year] is 55 percent tarmac, 45 percent gravel.”

Laps are roughly 6.5 miles long. There will be no separate starts for male and female divisions; each lap category will start at the same time. A reminder: Helmets are required. Stay tuned for awards, which will be given to the top five male and female winners in each division (5 Lap, 4 Lap, 3 Lap).

After the race, celebrate at Grind City Brewing Company, 76 Waterworks, with entertainment by Chinese Connection Dub Embassy.

Grit & Grind Gravel Grinder, Big River Crossing, Channel 3 Drive, Sunday, Nov. 1, 9 a.m., $45-$65.

Categories
Music Music Features

Webbstar: Rapper Hooks Up with CCDE to Deliver Reggae

CREDIT: Raven Wiseman

The singer, songwriter, and rapper Webbstar has one message for music fans: Expect the unexpected. Over his years of music making, he’s skipped across multiple genres, sometimes in a single song. Starting as a young rapper, his first record, Cuffing Season, also showed considerable melodic and R&B chops. The dawn of 2020 saw him introducing serious rock elements into his sound, especially with the single, “Shine,” which could be a collaboration with Gary Clark Jr., but it really springs from his partnership with Micah Wilshire and Ryan Peel. Peel has been integral to Webbstar’s most recent work, further broadening his production palette this summer in having him record with local reggae masters Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (CCDE).

That stroke of genius yielded two hot summer singles, “Bad Bad Ting,” a tribute to a certain woman’s hotness released under Peel’s name, featuring both Webbstar and CCDE, and the politically woke “Dem A Callin (Flodgin),” credited to CCDE, featuring Webbstar. Now, under his own name, Webbstar has released a new single created by the same collaboration, the hypnotic reggae soul of “South Memphis Woman.”

Raven Wiseman

Webbstar wants his fans to expect the unexpected.

The stylistic shift might surprise anyone who’s known Webbstar as Derrick Webb, a rapper since grade school, when he had a partner who’s since gained considerable acclaim. “I also work with Memphis Track Boy,” Webb explains. “He produced a lot of stuff for Moneybagg Yo, BlocBoy JB, and other big-time guys. And a lot of Cuffing Season was done with Memphis Track Boy. He’s had a lot of success. But I’ve known him since third grade! Then we started doing music when I was a sophomore in high school. By 10th grade, I had already recorded a mixtape. And he was doing beats already. He had a studio in his mom’s house. So we linked up, and the next year, I created a song for my football team. I was a junior at Whitehaven High School.”

Football fed his rap talents, but also opened up new perspectives when he got a scholarship to play with the University of Colorado Buffaloes. “I did all that rapping in Memphis, then I went to college in Colorado, with a whole different scene, a whole different culture. I started to really explore different music styles at that time. And I’d say that made me a songwriter. It gave me the ability to move between genres. There’s a lot of different ways into the game.”

“South Memphis Woman,” for example, first grew out of Webb’s other great musical love. “My granddaddy used to always play the blues,” he says, “taking me to football games on Saturday mornings. So I had the blues feel, like most Memphis children do.” And that’s what he had in mind when writing the song. “‘South Memphis Woman’ had been in the works in my head, only in my head, for about a year. And I imagined doing it as some kind of soulful blues … a kind of hole-in-the-wall type of feel.”

But then came his sessions with CCDE. “We started getting in the studio together, and Ryan brought it up. And when we created it right there on the spot, with Chinese Connection Dub Embassy, they took it in a reggae direction, and it was perfect. I think it was just meant for them to be on that song. They’re so talented, as soon as Ryan told them the idea, we made it immediately. Right there on the spot. That’s all it took.”

The track sports CCDE’s trademark groove with subtle atmospherics, Webbstar’s soulful singing, background vocals, and horn punches, adding up to a sound evoking reggae from decades past. As Webb notes, it may not be the direction of most music coming out of Memphis, or anywhere, these days, but he’s undeterred. “Because of the modern thing, some of the better reggae groups today are just not noticed. It’s not in the pop culture right now. It’s its own lane.”

He seems to relish surprising music fans with such twists and turns. “It can be hard for people to grab a hold of it at first, until they see the consistency. I’m gonna rap, I’m gonna make some melodies, I’m gonna give you lyrical content, but I’ve been keeping people guessing. I want people to know they can expect the unexpected. But whatever I make, it’s going to have my DNA in it.”

Categories
Best of Memphis Special Sections

Best of Memphis 2020 Nightlife

Best Beer Selection (in a bar)

1. Flying Saucer Draught Emporium

2. Young Avenue Deli

3. Lucchesi’s Beer Garden

The UFO-themed bar Downtown has made its name by having the best beer selection in the galaxy. Frankly, we wouldn’t be surprised if they could even serve up a Romulan Ale or a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Seriously, if anyone could, it would be Flying Saucer. Beam us up.

Best College Hangout

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

RP Tracks

1. RP Tracks

2. Railgarten

3. Newby’s

Anyone who has spent any time near the University of Memphis campus has popped into RP Tracks for a brew or a bite. It’s the one great uniter between students, professors, and staff. Well, that and maybe getting caught by the train. For excellent BBQ Tofu Nachos and enough beer to float a frat party, it’s got to be RP Tracks.

Best After-Hours Night Spot

1. Alex’s Tavern

2. Earnestine & Hazel’s

3. Paula & Raiford’s Disco

Maybe Granny was right and nothing good ever happens after 2 a.m. But then again, even Granny has been wrong once or twice. So where to go after last call on those nights that just shouldn’t end? Alex’s Tavern. When you need some Rock-Mo’s Chicken Drummies to soak up all that cheap beer? Definitely Alex’s.

Best Nightclub

1. Paula & Raiford’s Disco

2. Lafayette’s Music Room

3. Hernando’s Hide-A-Way

The best option when you want to “dance, dance, dance the night away” has absolutely got to be Paula & Raiford’s Disco. Don’t mind the (sometimes) long line to get inside, because, believe us, it is worth it. Light-up dance floor, signage forbidding drug use, 40-oz. beer, and all the grooviest hits of yesteryear combine to make Raiford’s Memphis’ Best Nightclub.

Best Craft Cocktails

★ BOM 1. Alchemy Memphis

2. The Cove

3. Art Bar at Crosstown Arts

Best Happy Hour

1. Alchemy Memphis

2. The Blue Monkey

3. Babalu

Best Bar

1. Alchemy Memphis

2. Lafayette’s Music Room

3. Art Bar at Crosstown Arts

The mix masters at Alchemy must have found the secret ingredient to a BOM hat trick. With an overwhelming win for Best Craft Cocktails, and wins for Best Happy Hour and the coveted Best Bar title, the tastefully appointed Cooper-Young bar has all the right ingredients for a happy hour hotspot.

Best Gay Bar

1. Dru’s Bar

2. Mollie Fontaine Lounge

3. The Pumping Station

Dru’s is the little neighborhood bar on Madison Avenue with the cool murals outside. They have karaoke, pool, comedy, and drag shows three nights a week. And cold brews served by friendly staff, of course. Like the mural says, Dru’s is “not just a bar, it’s your bar!”

Best Hole in the Wall

1. Earnestine & Hazel’s

2. Alex’s Tavern

3. P&H Cafe

It’s not every hole in the wall that used to be a brothel, or used to host hometown hero Craig Brewer’s famous Heaven and Hell Halloween parties. Or that’s totally haunted, has a long-running jazz night, and serves up a Soul Burger so tasty it’s been known to bring grown men to tears. Maybe that’s why Memphians proudly choose Earnestine & Hazel’s as Memphis’ Best Hole in the Wall.

Best Karaoke

1. P&H Cafe

2. Dru’s Bar

3. The Blue Monkey

The last six or seven months have been a long year. A really long year. But one of the things keeping us going is the thought of karaoke at the P&H Cafe. The mural on the ceiling, the various portraits of Elvis scattered about, the bobcat above the bar — this is the neighborhood dive where you’re always welcome, no matter how off-key your rendition of “Memory” may be. That’s right, we’re singing “Memory” from Cats, and they still serve us. Bless ’em.

Best Place to See Stand-Up

1. Chuckles Comedy House

2. P&H Cafe

3. The Orpheum

In the 14th century, Henri de Mondeville, a professor of surgery, promoted laughter as a post-operative therapy. Laughter, he said, was the best medicine. He’s not wrong. Laughter causes a release of pain-numbing endorphins, and it improves blood flow, too. So get ye to Chuckles for some stand-up comedy and healing humor. Doctor’s orders.

Best Place to Shoot Pool

1. Young Avenue Deli

2. Highpocket’s

3. P&H Cafe

Ah, the Deli. It’s perfectly situated, stumbling distance from all of Cooper-Young. Fuel your pool game with a reuben or a Sam I Am sandwich and a local beer, sidle up to the green-felted table, and slap your quarters down. Chalk up your cue, sip on your brew, and get ready to win this thing. Rack ’em up!

Best Sports Bar

1. Brookhaven Pub & Grill

2. Bayou Bar & Grill

3. Huey’s

This East Memphis hotspot has everything one could ask for in a sports bar. Impressive selection of foreign, domestic, and local brews? Check. Great pub grub? Check — try Brookhaven favorites like the Memphis Melt or the BLTC. All that, and the game is on. Owner Rick Spell says it best: “We serve fun here.”

Best Strip Club

1. Gold Club

2. The Pony

3. Purple Diamond

At the church picnic, Linda served the fried chicken. One man was having trouble deciding what piece of chicken he preferred. Linda helped him out by saying, “Most men prefer thighs and breasts.” For the hottest thighs and breasts in Memphis, see Linda at the Gold Club.

Best Bartender

1. Allan Creasy, Celtic Crossing

2. Morgan McKinney, Bari

3. David Parks, The Cove

Allan Creasy has topped this list many times in his 15 years behind the bar at Celtic Crossing. But he told the Flyer recently that he feels guilty about it. Others are better at mixology than he is, he said, he’s just quick with a pint and a joke. Nevertheless, hordes of Celtic regulars have decried Creasy’s departure but celebrated his new gig raising political cash for Future 901.

Best New Bar

Slider Inn

1. Slider Inn – Downtown

2. Knifebird Wine Bar

3. Bar Keough

Burgers and beer. What more do you need? With their savory sliders and robust drink menu, Slider Inn’s Downtown location tops the list as the Best New Bar in town.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Sacha Baron Cohen Returns to Skewer Us in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

In 1831, a French magistrate named Alexis de Tocqueville conned his government, known as the July Monarchy, into sending him on a trip to the United States, ostensibly to investigate the prison system. For nine months, he and a friend traveled through the young republic, making cursory visits to prisons while observing the people and institutions that had grown up in the four decades since the Constitution was adopted.

The French Revolution, which quickly followed the American one, had ended in terror and failure, reverting to a constitutional monarchy. De Tocqueville asked why the United States succeeded where the French had failed. What did it mean for a subject of a monarchy to become a citizen of a democracy? And how, the abolitionist Frenchman asked, did the country that so valued equality and human rights reconcile those views with the institution of slavery? In 1835, he published the first volume of Democracy in America. The book is considered one of the first works of modern sociology and political science, and is required reading for any student of American history.

Maria Bakalova joins the expedition as Borat’s daughter, Tutar.

Around 174 years later, in 2006, “Borat Sagdiyev” toured America in order to make a documentary he could take back to his native Kazakhstan, so the people of that brutal post-Soviet dictatorship could learn what it meant to be a citizen of a democracy in the 21st century. The resulting film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, became something of a modern classic — for some people, anyway. Kazakhstan, and the plaintiffs behind seven lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in damages from the film’s producers, were less impressed. But Kazakh diplomat Yerlan Askerbekov wrote that the film allowed audiences to “get an outsider’s view of the U.S. and reveal the prejudices of the Americans who Borat interacts with, functioning as a sort of 21st century Alexis de Tocqueville.”

Borat is, of course, not really from Kazakhstan. He’s British-born comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. The character Borat first appeared on Da Ali G Show, the British comedy show where Baron Cohen would adopt different personae and do interviews with unsuspecting people in “real life” situations. Airing on HBO in the U.S., it was a game-changer, blending reality television with fairly high-minded pranks. At least, they were high-minded compared to the oodles of prank shows that now infest YouTube.

On the eve of the most important election in America in generations, Baron Cohen brought Borat out of retirement and once again sent him on a tour of America. What he found in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was a country at once familiar and transformed. Since Borat is now a known prankster, he brought along his daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova) to take point on some of the more delicate operations.

Borat’s mission, as it says in the title, is to bribe Vice President Michael Pence with the gift of a monkey. When the monkey doesn’t survive the trip from Central Asia, Borat decides to use his daughter as the bribe instead. The high point of Subsequent Moviefilm is when Baron Cohen walks into the Conservative Political Action Conference dressed in KKK robes, changes into a rather uncanny Donald Trump costume in the bathroom, and interrupts Pence’s speech with Tutar thrown over his shoulder.

The looks of horror and confusion in the room full of Republican activists are what you want out of a Borat movie. But what comes before is even more shocking. The conference was held at the end of February 2020, and Pence dutifully repeats the administration’s line that only 15 people have COVID, and that the coronavirus was no threat to Americans. As I write this, more than 225,000 Americans have died of the virus, more than any other country in the world. CPAC is suing, but not for that.

Baron Cohen adapted to the pandemic, which broke out while he was filming, by quarantining himself with a pair of alt-right QAnon fans. The scenes are equally funny and queasy. I am not a huge fan of cringe comedy (it makes me cringe), but I found Borat repeatedly wringing laughs from me. Borat is cluelessly retrograde in his social beliefs and mores. This time around, he makes himself the butt of the joke even more than usual, foregrounding Tutar’s arc into a kind of feminism. Bakalova is the star of the instantly infamous scene where she entraps Rudolph Giuliani into what he thinks is going to be a tryst with a naive young reporter in a hotel room. In context, it’s kind of anticlimactic. They’re probably going to get sued again.

One thing’s for sure: Baron Cohen and Bakalova have ice water in their veins. Sometimes their counterparts are not unwitting — scenes with a Black babysitter look more like a pro-am improv session. But when it works, it’s a sight to behold. Subsequent Moviefilm delivers queasy laughs for a queasy time in America. Watch it before or after you vote.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Go Further: Virtual Race for the Cure Is This Weekend

CREDIT: Facebook/MaryBeth Werner Connor

This one is personal. Chances are it’s personal for you, too. According to breastcancer.org, about one in eight U.S. women will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime. Most of us know at least eight women. One of those women will be affected.

Susan G. Komen is the largest and best-funded breast cancer organization in the United States. Our local chapter, Susan G. Komen Memphis-MidSouth Mississippi, makes sure that 80 cents of every dollar is directed to its mission, and of that, 75 percent remains local. The remaining 25 percent funds breast cancer research.

Facebook/MaryBeth Werner Connor

MaryBeth Werner Connor is a fighter.

Contemporary Media, the Memphis Flyer parent company, is once again participating this year. The team is racing through Central Gardens for our sisters, mothers, aunts, and other women (as well as men). Come down and cheer our small but mighty group to the finish line as we Race for the Cure. We’ll be starting at 9 a.m.

A childhood friend, MaryBeth Werner Connor, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, recently gave us all great news.

“All of my cancer is gone,” said Connor. “The chemo worked, and the cancer has been eaten up. No lymph node involvement. I could not have made it through this without all of my family and friends who gave me the strength to handle this and kick cancer’s butt.”

MaryBeth, this one’s for you — and for breast cancer research, so that more women can say they kicked cancer’s butt.

Komen Memphis-MidSouth Virtual Race for the Cure®, komenmemphisms.org, Saturday, Oct. 31.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Lies I Tell: The Election, My Niece, and Voter Suppression

CREDIT: Peter Pettus, Library of Congress

Last week, I took my 6-year-old niece with me to early vote. As we walked into the polling place, hand in hand, I lied to her. I didn’t intend to. I just wanted to make the short walk from the parking lot to the building a quick lesson on voting rights.

What we’re about to do, I told her solemnly, is very, very important.

Slipping into the same voice I use to read bedtime stories, I began: A long, long time ago, there were people who fought really hard to keep people like us  —  Black people  —  from voting. But Black people and some white people worked really hard to make sure we could. To make those Black people proud, I said, we have to vote in every election. And, I added as a happily ever after, that’s why we were going to vote today.

Peter Pettus, Library of Congress

Participants in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965

No sooner had the words left my mouth when I realized I had not been honest. Why had I placed voter suppression in the distant past? Why did I feel compelled to leave out the violence, the blood spilled, the murders? Why did I obscure the villains, leaving them colorless as if their identities aren’t known?

The truth is this: Voter suppression, intimidation, and systemic disenfranchisement wasn’t long, long ago or in a place far away. It’s happening now, here, and all around.

Since the 2010 elections, 24 states have passed laws making it harder to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. From shrinking the number of early voting locations, cutting back the early voting period, enacting strict voter ID laws, and purging infrequent voters from the rolls, Republican-led attacks against the franchise seem unrelenting.

Recently, the Memphis branch of the NAACP sued the Shelby County Election Commission after it limited early voting locations to the Agricenter, which is outside the city core and closer to parts of the county that are majority-white, even though Shelby County is predominantly Black.

The NAACP won its suit, but the commission still managed to open late a key early voting site in the city’s core. The commission blamed it on a miscommunication with poll workers, but it read as spiteful, as if election officials were thumbing their noses at voting rights advocates.

The NAACP and the Tennessee Black Voter Project have since sued the commission again, “for its refusal to allow voters who submitted timely, but allegedly deficient, voter registration applications to correct any deficiencies in those applications on or before Election Day and then vote regular ballots.” A judge ruled against the commission this week.

In Houston, Texas, there have been allegations that volunteer Korean translators were being kicked out of polling places. In Kansas, the lone polling place in the majority-Hispanic town of Dodge City has been moved into the county, a mile from the nearest bus stop.

Ever since the Supreme Court overturned parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Southern states previously required to get federal okay before changing election laws rushed to make it harder for Black and brown people to vote.

“The decision in Shelby County opened the floodgates to laws restricting voting throughout the United States. The effects were immediate. Within 24 hours of the ruling, Texas announced that it would implement a strict photo ID law. Two other states, Mississippi and Alabama, also began to enforce photo ID laws that had previously been barred because of federal preclearance,” said the Brennan Center.

But I didn’t tell my niece about the Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder case that took the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act.

I didn’t tell her about Mississippi voting rights advocate and all-around badass Fannie Lou Hamer, an Indianola, Mississippi, tenant farmer who was fired by her plantation owner after she tried to register to vote in 1962. Undeterred, she opposed the state’s all-white delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Four years later, she was chosen as a delegate for the party’s presidential nominating committee in Chicago.

If I close my eyes, I can see the horrifying image of a battered John Lewis, beaten by a state trooper on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 for the crime of being a Negro trying to register other Negroes to vote. I know the names of martyrs Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, Rev. James Reeb, and Viola Gregg Liuzzo, all slain because they sought voting rights for Black people in the South.

None of this brutal, gruesome, painful, wretched history did I share with my beautiful, cornrow-wearing, baby teeth-missing, still-needs-a-nap niece. These American stories are the stuff of Black nightmares. So I lied. I turned the fight for the ballot into a fairy tale, where in the end, the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. And while I hope that comes to pass, I’m not sure that’s true either.

I’m not proud of my lie. I was simply trying to shield my niece from what she’ll see soon enough: That the mean people who didn’t want Black people to vote then are still with us now.

Wendi C. Thomas is the editor and publisher of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, where a version of this column first appeared.