Utah-based guitar string and accessory manufacturer, Black Harbor Sound, posted an announcement, featuring Memphis-based band Honoré astride a familiar set of red stairs, to Instagram last week. The guitar company was welcoming Honoré to their roster of endorsed artists with a shot of the frequently photographed stairs inside Crosstown Concourse.
Memphis is Different
A hilarious tweet from @panduh__ said, “Memphis is DIFFERENT different.” The tweet showed a screenshot of several messages from a DoorDash delivery person who was picking up from the Happy Mexican.
“Aye, bruh,” the message reads. “They said they can’t make yo food cuz they chefs arguin. They said cancel the order.”
Cracking up
Memphis Bridge Crack, the official unofficial Twitter account of the crack in the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, has kept the comedy flowing as strong as the waters below it.
For example, on a tweet from a Wall Street Journal story that noted “how one failed bridge in Memphis is costing business,” the Crack commented, “Ahem. I think you mean one *failed inspection team.* I didn’t do any of this myself.”
There is no doubt in my mind that children will have to deal with the long-term social effects of the COVID pandemic more than any other group. Just like there was an entire generation that was turned into hoarders because of the Great Depression, there are kids who are going to come out of this thing addicted to putting hand sanitizer on everything. They may even continue wearing masks past the point of needing them. After my grandmother died and we cleaned out her house, we found hundreds of Ziploc bags full of crumbs she saved from restaurants. She knew good and well she was never going to eat those crumbs, but she had been turned into a weirdo from her childhood of rationing. When it’s my son’s time to go, his grandchildren are going to find barrels of industrial cleaner and hydroxychloroquine in his cabinets.
We are only now starting to see the damage of what has happened to our children after being isolated for more than a year. There were a few times when my son got so frustrated at being distanced, that he and some other kids rebelled and ran through the neighborhood together just to feel what it was like to play. Other than that though, he has been kept away from most human contact aside from what you can get through a telephone. No carousel rides at the mall, no amusement parks, no movies, my 6-year-old son wasn’t even allowed to go to a playground … until now.
For the first time in more than a year, we took our son down to the local playground. There were maybe 20 or 30 kids there, all emerging like the cicadas, buzzing around one another and squealing. It was nice to hear the laughter of a group of children. I didn’t realize that I missed it. Then my son comes running up in tears. Here we go.
One parent sees the social effects of pandemic isolation. (Illustration: Chris Walter)
Apparently there was some kid running around who was in his kindergarten class in the “before times.” This kid, let’s say his name is Toby — it isn’t but for the purposes of this story it is. It’s a name like that for sure. I guess my son went to talk to this Toby, and of course this Toby didn’t remember him. They used to sit together every single day for eight hours, and the kid had no recollection of my son. Yes, this was a year or so ago, but my son was confused. Devastated. Crying his eyes out. He thought he had a true friend in this Toby.
Now I can confirm that Toby was in his class because I spent a good hunk of time volunteering down there. I am also not surprised in the least that this kid didn’t remember my son. I am kind of shocked that he remembered his own name. You know the type, Kool-Aid mustache, boogers hanging out of his nose. Pushy. I told my son to not worry about it and just play with some other kids. Then this kid starts picking on my son. Taunting him. All the kids are playing tag, and this Toby with his red mustache is hurling insults. That kind of stuff doesn’t fly with me, and I learned that intolerance must be on a genetic level.
I then watched as this 6-year-old of mine managed to herd all the other kids on the playground. One by one, he goes up to all 20 or 30 of them and somehow turns them all against this Toby. My son climbs to a lookout position high on top of the tallest slide and is commanding this group of children to run after and chase this kid. At first the mood was jovial, but eventually Toby became overwhelmed by the force and ran away bawling his eyes out, tears washing away his mustache, tripping over his flip-flops.
I am well aware that this was a teachable moment and I shouldn’t laugh. If I did, I made sure my son didn’t see me do it. When he finally climbed down from his command center, I asked him why he did what he did. Maybe he didn’t even know what he did? He’s 6. Well, he did. He knew. His answer was, “Toby told me he didn’t remember me, but next time, next time he will.”
What have I done?
Chris Walter is a Southern writer and artist. His recent book, Southern Glitter, and more can be found at his website kudzuandclay.com
Join me today for a trip to Elaine, Arkansas. It’s a long drive, and I could use some company.
As Highway 61 winds its way down the bluffs to the big-sky alluvial plain of the Mississippi Delta, towering clumps of clouds drift on the western horizon, distant rainstorms visible in the morning light. We’ll probably get wet later.
In Tunica County, signs for casinos appear. Some are thriving, others are ghostly shells, losers on the gaming wheel of fortune that began spinning 30 years ago. The outlet mall south of town, once a thriving retail mecca, now features several empty storefronts, the formerly heady thrill of wandering through J.Crew, Victoria’s Secret, and Nautica having been replaced by porch-box fairies in FedEx trucks.
We turn onto Highway 49, a slim two-lane running string-straight to the Helena Bridge, a narrow and rusty looking structure with kudzu and trumpet vines adorning the side rails. It does not inspire confidence. Once across, we take the Great River Road 20 miles south to Elaine, where in 1919, the greatest race massacre in U.S. history occurred. But you knew that. Didn’t you?
Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden
Late winter through early autumn of 1919 has become known as “Red Summer,” a time when white supremacist terrorism and racial riots took place in more than three dozen cities across the U.S. — and in one small town, Elaine, Arkansas — where we are now parked in front of a vacant building with a sign that says “Birdhouse Capital of the World.” There are no people in sight. In 1919, thanks to Jim Crow election laws, Black Americans couldn’t vote, hold office, or serve on juries. At the same time, thousands of African-American soldiers were returning from World War I and were beginning to feel resentment at the racism they came home to. The nascent NAACP had begun to speak out for racial justice.
The reaction to Black activism was swift and brutal. The KKK and other groups began ginning up violence and hate against the “negroes” for “spreading socialism.” Jingoistic newspapers around the country fed the fire with articles about “armed negroes in revolt.” Racial violence soon broke out in Chicago, Omaha, Tulsa, Washington, D.C., and more than 30 other cities. Black communities were destroyed. Hundreds were killed. Lynchings were common.
In Phillips County, Arkansas, 100 residents of Elaine held a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America in a church north of town on September 30, 1919. Three white men monitored the gathering. Shots were fired and returned. A white security officer was killed; a deputy sheriff wounded. The word went out in Helena that there was an “armed negro revolt” underway.
Over the next couple of days, as many as 1,000 vigilantes, soldiers, and police swarmed into Elaine and committed horrific acts of violence. From an eyewitness account:
“Soldiers in Elaine committed one murder after another with all the calm deliberation in the world, either too heartless to realize the enormity of their crimes, or too drunk on moonshine to give a continental darn. … several hundred of them began to hunt negroes and shotting [sic] them as they came to them.”
Accounts of how many Black men, women, and children were killed range from 150 to 800. No one knows for sure, but there is little doubt that it was the worst race massacre in U.S. history. The ensuing kangaroo court trial and imprisonment of 12 Black “rioters” changed U.S. civil rights history and is worth your time to learn about, because like most Americans, you’ve probably never heard about any of it.
Thanks to the folks at the Elaine Legacy Center, that’s changing. They are organized and pushing forward with presentations, lectures, and other programs to restore life to the area and tell its story. On September 30th, there will be a service to honor the victims of the massacre. I’m going to write more about Elaine and the Legacy Center later this summer. I hope you’ll join me for a return trip.
jackson baker
Discussing their intentions to run for judge next year at a
“Drinks with Democrats” event were (l to r) Erim Sarinoglu,
Lisa Stanley, and Sanjeev Memula.
Among the races on next year’s local ballot expected to generate some heat is that for district attorney general, the position held by Republican incumbent Amy Weirich since 2011 via appointment and successfully defended by Weirich in the 2012 and 2014 election seasons.
Other candidates may yet file for the position, but at this point the race is shaping up as one between Weirich and announced Democratic challenger Linda Nettles Harris, a veteran of both prosecutorial and legal-defense ranks.
At a generously attended fundraiser on South Front Street last week, Harris offered a preview of her campaign, promising to work “the road less traveled” and to heed “the voices of people who have felt that they have been neglected by the criminal justice system … people who have felt marginalized, who have felt ostracized, who have been left out.”
Referring to herself as a “statistical-driven person,” Harris said, “FBI statistics show that crime has gone up and prisons have been built, but crime has steadily increased.”
Harris laid special emphasis on a pledge to maintain “integrity” in the office if elected. “And what does integrity look like? Honestly, it looks like disclosing evidence when it is helpful to people and when it is not. It looks like following the guidelines of the American Bar Association that teaches you how to be ethical prosecutors.”
That would appear to be an indirect allusion to a recommendation by the state Board of Professional Responsibility that Weirich be censured for appearing to withhold potentially exculpatory evidence while prosecuting a murder case. The charges against Weirich were later dismissed.
• The DA’s race will be on the ballot along with a lengthy list of state judicial races that, like it, will be subject to eight-year terms for the winner. Some measure of just how extensive the list of contested races might be was indicated by the turnout last week at a happy-hour affair for Democrats at the Mellow Mushroom pizzeria on Park. Several attendees at the event professed interest in races for General Sessions positions without specifying particular seats.
Jackson Baker Linda Harris
• Jerri Green, who ran a tight race last year as a Democrat for the District 97 state House race won by Republican Mark White, has been hired by Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris as a policy adviser.
Plains All American Pipeline announced last Friday that the company would abandon plans for the proposed Byhalia Connection oil pipeline, which would have linked two existing oil arteries, the Diamond Pipeline and the Capline Pipeline, to pump oil from southwestern Tennessee to Marshall County, Mississippi.
As a reason for the move, the company cited low U.S. oil production resulting from the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. That sounds like half a reason to me, especially considering they dropped that piece of news near the end of business on the Friday before the Independence Day holiday weekend. A fuller version might be, “Given the current low oil production in the U.S., the pipeline just wasn’t worth the hassle.”
And there was hassle. The project received overwhelming opposition from a broad coalition of local and national parties. Local activists, members of local government, and even former Vice President Al Gore voiced their opposition to the proposed pipeline. The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy opposed it, as did Protect Our Aquifer, and the Memphis Community Against the Pipeline group was created to do the same.
The reasons for the opposition were twofold — namely that the pipeline would have been built across the Memphis Sand Aquifer, the source of our famously pure drinking water, and that, in Memphis at least, it would have gone through a predominantly Black neighborhood, a move that some critics claimed was intentional and an example of environmental racism.
Earlier in the year, Memphis City Councilmen Dr. Jeff Warren and Edmund Ford submitted a resolution opposing the plan. To quote Flyer news editor Toby Sells, “The resolution says African Americans were and are 75 percent more likely to reside near ‘toxic’ oil and gas infrastructure. It points to data from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that living within 30 miles of this infrastructure increases the risk of developing cancers including lymphoma, lung cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer.”
It’s true the Byhalia Connection project would have brought some dollars to town. Someone’s got to be paid to build the thing, after all, but that would have been a one-time, temporary gain — paying off on a gamble against long-lasting consequences. There are no quick fixes for a community saddled with unfair health burdens — or for a tainted aquifer.
One million people get their clean drinking water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer, and we all owe a debt of thanks to the activists, organizers, political figures, et al. who spoke up against the pipeline. Certainly, there may never have been a problem with it. I can’t claim to know the future. It’s worth noting, though, that Memphis is within the radius of the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Also, I can’t help but think of the short video that made the rounds on social media over the weekend. In the clip, shared by Manuel Lopez San Martin, a section of the Gulf of Mexico was ablaze due to the rupture in an underwater pipeline. I hope to never see the Mississippi River alight with flames. With that image in mind, in a zone with known seismic activity, an oil pipeline above some of the cleanest drinking water in the country does not sound like a recipe for success.
So yes, the risk was far too great for such a small reward — a reward to be reaped by a few. It takes time for water to filter through the aquifer — a long time — and that investment of time creates a shared resource to which we should all have an equal claim and responsibility to protect. But it’s those who organized and attended rallies, circulated and signed petitions, wrote letters to local leaders, started hashtags on Twitter, and generally refused to give up who took on that responsibility. To them, I offer my wholehearted thanks. I also can’t help but be impressed at the organization and determination on display. So I say that congratulations, too, are in order.
It’s no small thing to stand up to power, and I wonder what other activism might be inspired by this victory. Jesse Davis
Don Bryant & the Bo-Keys play the Levitt Shell Sept. 10 (Credit: C. Matt White)
When we wrote about the return of live music this spring, the folks at Levitt Shell were already planning to bring back their much-loved Orion Free Music Concert Series, but there were no details. As Executive Director Natalie Wilson said at the time, “With the impact of Covid19, we can’t do our normal four nights a week, but we are coming back Friday and Saturday evenings in September, through the third weekend of October. We’re going to focus on supporting our local musicians this fall. And we pay our musicians at the market rate because we believe in not just presenting music, but also powering music. And that includes supporting our musicians and their livelihoods. It’s been our mission since the Shell was built in the 1930s.”
Formed in 1982, the Memphis Black Arts Alliance is one of the oldest and most prominent African-American focused arts organizations in the city. Executive Director Lar’Juanette Williams is leading the charge to bring opening acts for the series.
“Though we’re still finalizing dates, we’re excited to bring acts such as Adajyo, the Memphis Jazz Workshop, Young Actors Guild, Caza Teatro, SubRoy Studios, and Kurl McKinney and Sons to name a few,” said Williams. “Memphis has always had a diverse wealth of phenomenal artistry. We are so very pleased to partner with the Levitt Shell to highlight and produce great local entertainment.”
The Shell’s plan was to fund the free music with the six ticketed events that have been happening at the shell since May. And now the fruits of that plan are to be harvested. Today, the Levitt Shell released its fall schedule, and it’s impressive — all the more so because, true to their word, they’re focusing entirely on local artists.
The caliber of these artists speaks for itself, but we’ll point out a couple of notable details that might not be apparent at first glance.
Many are asking, what is “Occupy the Shell”? It’s no less than an extravaganza of local hip hop, R&B and soul artists that should be on your radar, especially because the event is curated to help “musicians and recording artists facing difficulties imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Beginning at 4 p.m. on September 4, the event features these performers: Tyke T – Hip Hop/Rap Iron Mic Coalition – Hip Hop/Rap D’Vonna Taylor – Neo Soul Jakub Trunk – Hip Hop/Rap J. Buck – Soul Tha Kidd from Marz – Hip Hop/Rap Mydes – Hip Hop/Rap Moe Javi – Hip Hop/Rap Trina Machelle – R&B/NeoSoul Dee Jizzle – R&B Jay DaSkreet – Hip Hop/Rap Sumo Tre – Hip Hop/Rap Juju Bushman – Soul Bleu Boys – Hip Hop/Rap Kiña del Mar – Soul/Gospel/Hip Hop/Rap Courtney Terez – R&B Jaeti – Hip Hop/Rap
Another event beginning in the afternoon, the Stone Soul Picnic, presents a similarly diverse array of artists, from gospel and soul, to world music, to the outright funk of the one and only Bar-Kays. You read that right: the Bar-Kays. For free. At 3 p.m. on September 18, the Shell is the place to be:
3:00 – 3:05 Devotion 3:10 – 3:20 Star Spangled Banner/Lift Every Voice – Cleveland 3:25 – 3:40 Mt. Moriah East Praise Team 3:45 – 4:00 Sierra Ward Pope 4:05 – 4:35 The Mellowtones 4:40 – 5:20 Take 2 5:25 – 5:55 Echoairs 6:00 – 6:20 Ekpe 6:25 – 6:50 Uncle Richard’s Puppets 6:55 – 7:25 Chinese Connection Dub Embassy 7:30 – 8:00 U-Turn 8:05 – 9:00 BarKays
It’s Tuesday, but that doesn’t stop Music Video Monday from celebrating Independence Day in uniquely Memphis style. Bluff City bluesman Bobby Rush has been partnering with the Curb Institute at Rhodes College since he was the music and culture program’s first visiting scholar in 2014. Rush has continued to mentor and teach ever since, even after surviving COVID-19 last year. At the liberal arts school’s 2021 commencement ceremonies, the Beale Street legend was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities degree.
Rush teamed up with some of his mentees at Royal Studios to record a bluesy arrangement of “America The Beautiful” for the 4th. Joining them were Eddie Cotton on organ, Fuzzie Jeffries on guitar, and a horn line featuring Hope Clayburn, Jim Spake, and Victor Sawyer. Capturing the action on camera was Ethan Van Drimmelen and Jackson Hendrix. “Oh beautiful for spacious skies!”
If you would like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
It appears there will be a Year Four of the Penny Hardaway Era 2.0 at the University of Memphis. After exchanging winks with the NBA’s Orlando Magic last month, the living face of Tiger basketball retains his office at the Laurie-Walton Family Basketball Center on Getwell. As a statue of Larry Finch is literally rising outside that facility, Hardaway continues his quest to return a long-proud program to a place where far more than an NIT championship will be celebrated.
How close did Hardaway come to leaving? When an interview is part of the equation, that’s close enough for Tiger fans, boosters, and sponsors. Enough to raise blood pressure, even as the Mid-South summer seems to slow movement of any kind to a lazy crawl. Hardaway had some very special seasons as a player with Orlando — he was twice named first-team All-NBA and helped the Magic to the 1995 Finals — so a fit exists, even if it crosses a couple of basketball generations. Having never coached a game in the NCAA tournament, Hardaway’s credentials for an NBA job — on paper — may seem thin. But he would sell tickets and sponsorships in Florida just as he has here in Memphis.
Some have insisted Tiger basketball would be fine had Hardaway left. It’s an institution, larger than any individual, larger even than The Guy. Finch himself received a pink slip (after 11 seasons as head coach) on the concourse of The Pyramid. Legends expire, particularly in a time where patience is nonexistent, where popularity is today’s Twitter trend, where a game-changing recruiting class spends no more than a season together. Had Hardaway left, well, next man up.
I’m not sure that would be the scenario here in Memphis, not with a premature farewell from Penny Hardaway. Think about how much Hardaway loves University of Memphis basketball, how much he adores his hometown. He could live anywhere in the world he chooses, but has kept a home in the Bluff City. When he was named head coach in 2018, there was a “finally!” feeling at the Laurie-Walton press conference but, more generally, throughout the city. We had Our Guy, and Our Guy had embraced us. If he had left after only three seasons, and with nothing to show but that NIT hardware? Over the course of a lifetime, you’ll have people give up on you, or seek greener pastures. And you move on. But when that perfect match — you know it’s perfect — proclaims things aren’t right? That kind of cut leaves a scar.
So exhale, Memphis. And back to work for Penny Hardaway. Instead of trying to rebuild the Magic (Orlando finished 14th among 15 Eastern Conference teams last season), Hardaway will study his own revamped roster — bye-bye Boogie Ellis and D.J. Jeffries, hello Johnathan and Chandler Lawson — and plot a course toward the Tiger program’s first Big Dance since, gulp, 2014. Instead of chasing the Milwaukee Bucks, Atlanta Hawks, and Philadelphis 76ers, Hardaway must close the gap with the University of Houston. (The Cougars reached the 2021 Final Four, remember.) That’s Penny’s challenge, really, in summation. Do for Memphis what Kelvin Sampson has done in east Texas. And frankly, it’s a lower hurdle to leap than the one (the many) he’d face in the NBA.
Penny Hardaway is still Our Guy. As he reaches a life milestone — Hardaway turns 50 on July 18th — the “kid” from Binghampton remains the personification of all that is wonderful about Tiger basketball. Temptations are part of the mix for a man with Hardaway’s profile. But making the right relationship work brings rewards of a rare and distinctive kind. There’s reason to believe University of Memphis basketball is getting closer to such a prize.
Riley Keough and Taylour Page are strippers on a Tampa tear in Zola.
One October evening in 2015, a woman named A’Ziah King tapped out the 148-tweet long story of her weekend in Tampa. Zola, as she is known, was a waitress at a Hooters in Detroit who sometimes danced at local strip clubs for extra cash. One particularly crappy night, she had a customer named Jess, and they bonded over stripper stories. The two became friends, so Jess invited her on a road trip to Florida, where she knew a guy at a high-class club where the talent could rake it in. Intrigued by the prospect of making rent for the rest of the year in a couple of days (Florida has a reputation among strippers as being profitable territory), Zola accepts the offer. Then, things go south.
It is Florida, after all.
Along for the 20-hour ride is a hulking man who Jess calls her roommate, but who won’t give his name, and Jess’ boyfriend, who Zola quickly finds is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Once they reach The Big Guava, Zola is drawn into a vortex of motels, prostitution, dysfunction, and finally spiraling violence. But she lived to tell the tale on Twitter, and her thread went viral under the hashtag #TheStory.
Because of my shamefully intense Twitter addiction, I, and thousands of others, read @_zolarmoon’s epic thread with bursts of queasy laughter while mumbling “this can’t be real.” It was real. There are pictures.
There’s a saying on the hellsite that Twitter has a new main character every day, and you’d better pray it’s not you. Achieving vitality at the level of #TheStory usually means fleeting, ephemeral fame that is extremely hard to monetize. The kind of attention you are likely to attract is negative. Zola King is the exception. After freelance scribe David Kushner sold her story to Rolling Stone, Hollywood came calling. This is the kind of thing that’s catnip to a producer. Not only is there plenty of sex and violence, but lots of people already know the story, and there’s a hook that ensures folks like me spend the first half of their reviews recounting six-year-old social media trends.
Nicholas Braun, Riley Keough, Taylour Paige, and Colman Domingo in Zola.
What newly minted executive producer Zola King has, beyond a level of street smarts that counts as a superpower, is a strong, unique voice, a fantastic ear for dialogue, and an innate sense of how to pace a narrative — vital ingredients for a good film that something like Angry Birds lacks. Zola also has director Janicza Bravo, who has an eye for Kubrickian symmetry and a grasp of film grammar, which is sadly lacking in today’s Hollywood. The most unusual thing about this movie about a digital phenomenon is that it’s shot on film. Ari Wegner’s cinematography positively revels in the grain, capturing that elusive, hyper-real yet dirty feel of beachside Florida hotels.
But none of that works unless the pair of frenemies at the center of the story can carry the picture. I once described Pulp Fiction as “a Seinfeld episode with gangsters” — a delicate balance of mortal fear and slapstick comedy that inspired a thousand flaccid neo-noir imitators in the 1990s. It’s the acting that ensures Zola succeeds where films like Two Days in the Valley failed. Taylour Paige and Riley Keough are perfection as Zola and the lawyer-renamed Stefani. Possessing considerable genetic gifts and subtly expressive eyes, Paige faces the various life-threatening absurdities thrown at her as just another day at the office. Keough (who, I am obliged as a Memphian to point out, is Elvis Presley’s granddaughter) starts out doing an uncanny imitation of Taryn Manning in Hustle & Flow, then imbues the manipulative Stefani with a little pathos. They communicate in a thick stripper patois that narrator Zola occasionally translates for the audience. Think of Zola as Jackie Brown’s Instagram account come to life.
The film builds a parallel power dynamic between Zola and Stefani’s male companions. Nicholas Braun is hilariously pathetic as Derrek, Stefani’s dim bulb boyfriend who takes the ultimate pratfall. Colman Domingo is stunning as X, Stefani’s unnamed pimp. His charming Floridian drawl can turn on a dime into a menacing Nigerian snarl. Even though this is a story told from the point of view of a marginalized Black woman, X’s overt code-switching is one of the keys to the success of this extraordinary picture. Everyone on-screen — except for poor Derrek — is constantly putting on airs. Before stepping onto the stage, Zola asks herself “which me am I going to be tonight?” Stefani sells different versions of herself to a parade of Florida men; a quick shot of Keough’s mid-coitus, thousand-yard stare stuck with me after the credits rolled. No one but us, Zola’s Twitter confidants, knows the true content of anyone’s heart — and Zola might be zooming us, too.
The controversial Byhalia Pipeline Connection project has been abandoned for reasons related to the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said in a formal announcement Friday.
A joint venture with two companies — Valero and Plains All American Pipeline — began surveying here last year for a project to build a 49-mile pipeline from Memphis to Marshall County, Mississippi, for a new pipeline that would connect to other crude-oil pipelines in the area.
The project raised the ire of Memphis activists who argued it would run through primarily Black neighborhoods, exposing residents there to environmental risks. The project was also the target of moves by members of the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission to pause or stop its progress.
The company announced in a Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) document that it “is no longer pursuing the Byhalia Connection construction project primarily due to lower U.S. oil production resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“We value the relationships we’ve built through the development of this project, and appreciate those that supported the project and would have shared in its ongoing benefits including our customers, communities, energy consumers, landowners, area contractors, and suppliers,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.
