On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress and proposed that the United States “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” It was an astonishing thing to propose, but Kennedy persevered and managed to achieve NASA funding for the unlikeliest of goals. Kennedy did not live to see the dream he set in motion fulfilled, but his ambition was achieved in July 1969, with the landing and return to Earth of Apollo 11.
My New Year’s wish for Memphis is that its leaders — civic and corporate — have the courage and vision to embark upon a moonshot: to set a goal to become the first American city to successfully address its poverty problem, to change Memphis from one of the country’s poorest cities to one of its most prosperous.
I know. That seems an impossible dream, like, well, walking on the moon in 1961. Besides, if you ask the average Memphian what the city’s biggest problem is, they’ll say it’s crime, not poverty. Yes, Memphis does have a crime problem. Too many cars are being stolen, too many homes are being broken into, too many citizens are being shot and killed, too many young people are living without hope or guidance and turning to crime.
But the crime problem has publicists, and they’re pushing a 24/7 narrative that crime is everywhere. Local television news and social media are the crime problem’s biggest boosters — getting clicks, views, and readership by scaring us, day after day.
In response, politicians get elected by promising to be “tough on crime,” usually meaning they’ll hire more police and demand stiffer sentencing. That’s like pledging to put band-aids on a cancerous tumor. If those policies worked, our crime problem would be fixed by now. Get-tough policies don’t stop crime; they just fill up jails and overload the court system — and lead to the kind of police brutality that killed Tyre Nichols.
Poverty gets little TV time, little social-media buzz. No politician gets elected by pledging to “get tough” on poverty. But almost all of the city’s problems, including crime, stream from the river of poverty. The way to reduce crime is to dam the river, not the stream.
Too expensive, you say? Listen, if this poor-ass city can come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to fund football stadiums, basketball arenas, fabulous art museums, and glorious new city parks, surely we can find ways to leverage private and public funds to pay for more and better teachers, to fund a public transit system that can reliably get people from one side of town to jobs on the other, to keep children fed, to get people healthcare, to pay them an equitable wage.
Impossible, you say? Let me return you to 1961, the year Kennedy proposed going to the moon. Do you know what was happening in Memphis that year? Thirteen “Negro” first-graders were integrating our public schools. They were separated into small groups, no more than four to a school, because, you know, Memphis didn’t want to rush into things. In fact, the city initially planned to integrate its schools one grade at a time over the next 12 years — longer than it would take to put a man on the moon.
The grade-a-year plan held until 1965, when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. In 1966, all Memphis school grades were integrated, although that could mean 20 Black students at a high school with 1,500 students. And vice versa.
Let me do the math for you: Black people were enslaved in this country from 1619 until 1865. They lived under Jim Crow and segregation in this city for another 100 years, until 1965, meaning Black folks in Memphis have had 58 years to overcome the oppression that kept them from equal opportunity in employment, education, housing, and political leadership for 346 years.
This is the root of our poverty problem, which is the root of our crime problem. Our city’s leadership is Black. Most of its citizens are Black. It’s time for all of us who live here to dare to dream big. Come on, Memphis. Let’s shoot for the moon.
