Tag: Keith Norman

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “Simple Song of Freedom” by Memphis Freedom Band

Carla Thomas

It’s been a tough few years for the cause of peace. The Russian invasion of Ukraine just hit its two-year anniversary, with no end in sight. After the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel responded with the most deadly military operation of the 21st century, which has devolved into a quagmire of violence and famine in Gaza, where two million people face hunger in a bombed-out landscape that used to be their home.

These high-profile conflicts have drawn attention from Sudan, where a civil war has displaced eight million people, and millions more are entering into famine while both sides try to starve the other one out. Meanwhile, in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is slipping into warlordism as Port Au Prince gangs conduct running battles with what’s left of the government. It’s enough to drive you to despair if you’re paying attention.

The antidote to despair is music. Italian (by way of Memphis) musician Mario Monterosso organized the Memphis Freedom Band to put out a message of peace. Last December, he invited a who’s who of Memphis musicians to record with producer Scott Bomar at Sam Phillips Recording, including Kallen Esperian, Rev. Charles Hodges, Dr. Gary Beard, Dr. Keith Norman of First Baptist Church Broad, The Bar-Kays’ Larry Dodson, Priscilla Presley, and a rare appearance by the queen of Memphis soul Carla Thomas. Filmmaker Billie Worley was on hand with a camera to capture the historic moment in the studio, as the big band sang “Simple Song of Freedom,” a 1969 hit by Bobbi Darin.

“Since the middle of the 20th century, Memphis music has been the strongest musical bridge across the world,” says Monterosso. “And now we come together in solidarity as one voice to create a bridge of hope and freedom for the people and children of Ukraine and all those countries hit by wars.”

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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News News Blog

NAACP Expresses Support for TBI Investigating Police Shooting

Darrius Stewart

In a press conference at First Baptist-Broad on Wednesday morning, Keith Norman, president of the Memphis chapter of the NAACP, said the organization supports the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) looking into the police shooting death of Darrius Stewart.

Norman said the organization helped state Representative G.A. Hardaway in crafting a bill to mandate that all police-involved shootings in the state be investigated by the TBI rather than by police departments in their own jurisdictions.

“No local body should should do an investigation of a police shooting. An independent body should investigate,” Norman said. 

On Monday, the Memphis Police Department and Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirch announced that Stewart’s Friday night shooting death by Memphis Police officer Connor Schilling would be investigated by the TBI rather than by the MPD. The decision has been criticized by some because TBI files are sealed from the public. Many are calling for more transparency in the investigation.

Norman said he supported that transparency, and he urged citizens to push for a change in the law that would require TBI documents to be made public.

“I would encourage all citizens to get involved in petitioning for a change in the law so that findings could be made public,” Norman said.

Norman said the NAACP will also be looking into protocol for dealing with passengers in cars during traffic stops. Stewart was riding in a car that was pulled over for having a headlight out. 

Norman said that people should remain calm while the investigation is underway. Stewart was placed in the back of a squad car during the traffic stop while Schilling checked for warrants. The police account of what happened says that, when Schilling opened the squad car to handcuff Stewart, the man kicked the door and tried to attack the officer. Shortly after the warrant check, police reported that Stewart had been shot and an ambulance was called for. Stewart later died at The Med. Some have questioned whether or not the police should have even been checking on warrants for a passenger.

“We have questions about what are the rights of a passenger under the rule of law during a mere traffic violation,” Norman said. “Should officers have the right to question everyone in the car? This can lead to inappropriate contact with citizens who have not committed a crime.”

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Politics Politics Feature

With Election Less Than a Month Away, Patterns Are Taking Shape

CREDIT: Jackson baker

We are now less than a month away from August 7th, when the final votes in the Shelby County general election and state and federal primaries will be counted, and distinct patterns are taking shape.

Those races that were expected to be the most closely watched ones at the beginning of the election season — for the 9th District congressional seat, for Shelby County Mayor, for District Attorney General, for the District 29 state Senate seat, and for Juvenile Court Judge and Juvenile Court Clerk, among others — continue to command attention.

Although several circumstances — including charges and counter-charges, endorsements, demographics, and the like — are potentially influencing voter reactions, one factor that cannot be overlooked is the perennial one of money. Some candidates have it in spades, while others are struggling.

A word of caution: Lest it be forgotten, two candidates in the May 6th primaries for county offices — Kenneth Whalum, running for the Democratic nomination for County Mayor, and Martavius Jones, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the District 10 County Commission seat — nearly won races against highly favored opponents with more visible campaigns and vastly more funding.

Credit those outcomes to the power of name recognition, which remains a major factor in the current scene.

For what it’s worth, however, here are three examples:

• City Councilman Lee Harris, who is campaigning aggressively in his Democratic primary effort to unseat District 29 state Senator Ophelia Ford, garnering endorsements by the bushel and across the political board, is also raising disproportionate amounts of money — he boasts a 10-to-1 ratio over Ford’s in the reporting quarter ending June 30th. (His edge in money on hand is somewhat lesser — $28,646.29 to $11,549.66, a shade less than 3-to-1).

• Incumbent Republican County Mayor Mark Luttrell, whose ads have been omnipresent on TV of late, has a marked financial advantage over Democratic nominee Deidre Malone, with a reported $132,417 on hand as of the June 30th report, against $38,915.

• Rather famously, the Democrats’ nominee for District Attorney General, Joe Brown, whose colleagues on the party ticket were counting on him for help, both from the luster of his “Judge Joe Brown” TV fame and from his bankroll, has hit snags in both respects and reports only $745 on hand as of June 30th, compared to $269,227 for his opponent, Republican incumbent D.A. Amy Weirich.

In all three of these cases, the financial underdog is seeking a tactical edge elsewhere.

Ford had her first public event last week, a fund raiser/meet-and-greet at the funeral home of brother Edmond Ford on Elvis Presley Boulevard, gathering around her not only numerous members of the still powerful Ford extended family but supporters from elsewhere on the political spectrum, notably GOP County Commissioner Terry Roland, her former opponent in a 2005 special election.

Malone continued with a series of events targeting various components of the Shelby County body politic — meeting, for example, with a group of women’s rights advocates on Saturday at Pyro’s Pizza on Union, and contrasting her strong pro-choice stance with what she described as positions on Luttrell’s part that were ambivalent at best, particularly in his having chosen to disenfranchise Planned Parenthood in 2011 as the county’s partner in employed Title X federal funding for women’s health.

Brown, meanwhile, was working the grass roots, especially in the inner city, with his “Law and Order Tour” with sidekick Bennie Cobb, the Democratic nominee for Sheriff. He presided over an event last week at the Central Train Station downtown and made appearances at forums, like one held at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church on Sunday, where he continued to levy attacks on Weirich, blaming her for negligence in the matter of the much-discussed rape-kit backlog and questioning her use of federal and state funding.

• Early voting for the August 7th elections begins this Friday, July 18th, at the Shelby County Election Commission’s downtown location, and will continue there and, from Monday, July 21st, at 21 satellite voting sites until Saturday, August 2nd. (The locations of the satellite sites will be posted at memphisflyer.com.)

• In the wake of several meetings of the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee hashing out disputes over the party’s endorsement of judicial candidates but leaving them intact, a group of Democratic lawyers, including former party chairmen David Cocke and Van Turner, is issuing its own ballot — including judges left off the party endorsement list whom they deem deserving.

These include Probate Court Judge Kathleen Gomes, Criminal Court Judge Mark Ward, and General Sessions Judges Bill Anderson, Phyllis Gardner, and John Donald, among others.

• The first fully separate cattle call for Board candidates took place Monday night at the First Baptist Church on Broad under the joint sponsorship of several ad hoc education organizations.

Present and accounted for were Chris Caldwell and Freda Garner-Williams in District 1; Stephanie Love in District 3; David Winston in District 5; Shante K. Avant in District 6; Miska Clay Bibbs in District 7; and Roshun Austin, Mike Kernell, and Damon Curry Morris in District 9.

Absent from the event, which took place during an off-and-on thunderstorm, were Teddy King and Anthony D. Lockhart in District 3; Scott McCormick in District 5; Jimmy L. Warren in District 6; and William E. Orgel in District 8.

The format called for each candidate to make an introductory statement and field one question from the moderator, Daarel Burnette II of the education periodical Chalkbeat Tennessee subbing for Keith Norman, the church pastor, who was absent. Though Burnette’s question was the same for each candidate, having to do with the candidate’s foremost objective as a prospective board member, there was a fair amount of variety in the answers elicited, most of them sensible and well informed, concerning issues ranging from curriculum to parent-teacher relations.

A final round of questions was solicited from the audience. Fielding a question about the desirability of separating “politics” from education, Kernell, a longtime state representative from southeast Memphis, was unique in embracing that inevitable pairing, saying that his experience and entrée with the state legislature could have positive results for his district and Shelby County Schools (SCS).

The nine-member SCS board being elected in this year’s school board elections from the city of Memphis and unincorporated areas of Shelby County replaces the provisional seven-member board, which was elected from the whole of Shelby County.

One of the members of the outgoing seven-member board, David Reaves of Bartlett, was an interested spectator Monday night, chatting amiably before the event with several of his current Board colleagues who were taking part in the forum. Reaves is now a County Commissioner-elect and will be swapping chairs in September.

Monday night’s event took place under the auspices of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Ad hoc co-sponsors included representatives of Students First, Stand for Children, and the aforesaid Chalkbeat Tennessee.

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News News Blog

Minority Leaders Say “No Room” for Bigotry in Memphis After Brooks’ Comments

CREDIT: Shelby County Government

Commissioner Henri Brooks

  • Shelby County Government
  • Commissioner Henri Brooks

In a joint press conference Thursday morning at First Baptist Church on Broad Avenue, community leaders from Latino Memphis and the Memphis branch of the NCAAP agreed that Shelby County Commissioner Henri Brooks’ recent comments about Hispanics should lead to an economic conversation rather than a racial one.

During a Shelby County Commission meeting on Monday, Brooks said Hispanics “asked to come” to the United States.

Pablo Pereya, who is Hispanic, was at the meeting where commissioners were discussing whether or not a local roofing company was discriminating against African-Americans because all 25 of its roofers are Hispanic. Though he was there for a different reason, Pereya spoke to the commissioners about the issue but became frustrated.

“I see you guys smirking and laughing like I’m not a minority,” Pereya told commissioners. “I know what it’s like to be a minority. I grew up in Memphis, and you being a Hispanic in Memphis is definitely the minority of a minority.”

Brooks responded, pointing to Pereya.

“You asked to come here,” Brooks said. “You asked to come here. We did not. And when we got here, our condition was so egregious, so barbaric. Don’t ever let that come out of your mouth again because, you know what, that hurts your case. Don’t compare the two. They’re not comparable.”

Mauricio Calvo, the executive director of Latino Memphis, and Rev. Keith Norman, president of the NAACP Memphis branch, spoke about moving forward with the “new” Memphis.

“The new Memphis is a table of brotherhood in my imagination, where all people are equitable and race doesn’t play such a prominent matter,” Norman said. “There’s always concerns and issues and we recognize that — we aren’t blind. We don’t live in a colorblind society. But to take it to this level is regressive.”

Both leaders say they want to look toward the future.

“In our perspective, in the new Memphis we’re trying to build, there is absolutely no room for intolerance and bigotry from anybody. I encourage voters to look closely at the upcoming election for that particular candidate or any candidate,” Calvo said during the press conference.

Norman also said the discussion needs to serve a higher purpose.

“We don’t want to concentrate on the sound bytes being played in the news. We need to talk about making sure that our contracting process has proper oversight, people are being awarded contracts based on merit and that the same standards apply federally, state, and locally,” Norman said. “A fair living wage ought to be included in this conversation to make sure that we’re not pitting groups against one another surrounding a low wage. Oftentimes what’s driving this engine is who will bid for the lowest dollar and that low dollar can be below what we consider to be a living wage.”

As to whether or not Brooks should resign, Norman said he believed the voters would ultimately decide, and Calvo agreed.

“Our community, quite frankly, cannot afford these types of things. We need to be working together to lift up the entire community,” Calvo said to reporters. “We have way too many poor people in Memphis — black, white, Latino, and any other community. We have to make sure our time in the county commission is spent being productive.”

Calvo said Latino Memphis and the NCAAP are trying to push past Brooks’ comments in response.

“How we handle this speaks to our character. We’re moving forward because we don’t want to address [those comments]. We have bigger and better things to address,” he said. “If you have two races fighting against each other for a dollar, what kind of dollar is that?”

Business interests are also at play here, Calvo added: “At the end of the day, we want to attract people to do more business in Shelby County. The people who are already in Shelby County need to have confidence that their elected officials are going to be representing all people in a professional manner. There’s a challenge and an opportunity here.”