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Young, Gifted, and Black

CREDIT: Ziggy Mack

We get some choice comments here at The Memphis Flyer.

Last week, we featured Memphis Black Restaurant Week in The Memphis Flyer weekly Food News column, and naturally, one intrepid newsletter reader raised a thematic question: “Really? Only way I celebrate this is if next week is Red Restaurant Week and the next Purple Restaurant Week etc……….[sic]. C’mon people, let it go.”

If this reader’s lamentation strikes a chord with you, you might ought to skip over the next couple of pages. Likewise, if there’s a purple-hued restaurateur out there in Memphis, please email me, because I want that story.

This story is about up-and-coming Black artists in Memphis. And when we say Black artists, we mean we are drawing attention to three of them — an itty-bitty, teeny-tiny microscopic slice of the landscape of Black creativity that pulses throughout the 324 square miles comprising Memphis. And while interviewing these three young artists, we asked them what other Black artists they think we should keep our eyes on. It’s the right thing to do — you go to the experts who are thriving and creating while juggling an existence designated as political merely because of their melanin.

This isn’t the first Memphis media attempt to showcase talent springing from a demographic that makes up 63 percent of our city, and it certainly won’t be the last. But the history of ignoring African-American voices and achievements runs deep in this country, and Memphis is no exception. It’s not enough to build museums dedicated to Black progress and call it a day.

One issue isn’t going to neutralize generations of silence and neglect. It’s up to Memphians of all demographics and socioeconomic standing to invest in and explore the arts, businesses, restaurants, and enterprises of Black Memphians. Because for the majority of people in our city, much of history equates to erasure, and the antidote to erasure is celebration.

Ziggy Mack

Ziggy Mack

Ziggy Mack: On the Zoom
“I’m probably not going to sleep tonight, but that’s okay.”

That’s Ziggy Mack, a native Memphian, who is currently splitting his focus between this interview and booking a flight to Atlanta, with a continuation on to Cape Town, South Africa.

If you’re around Mack for more than five minutes, you might wonder if he ever sleeps at all. Words rat-a-tat-tat out of his mouth at a machine-gun pace.

“I learned the trick to avoiding jet lag,” he explains, excitedly: “If you just try to match the time zone you’re headed to, you won’t get jet lag. If you go to sleep in your own time zone, then you’ll have jet lag.

Mack calls it “guerilla traveling,” and it’s a skill he’s sharpened over the last few years as his career in photography has commanded a fair amount of globe trotting — Scotland, Ireland, and Peru, to name a few destinations.

For this particular journey, Mack is headed to a workshop that will enhance his already specialized talent in underwater ballet photography.

But before there were submerged arabesques, Mack got his start in sweaty nightclubs as a night-life photographer, commissioned to capture sweaty Memphians gyrating away, possibly fueled by Red Bulls and vodka. Mack’s employers were impressed with what he was able to capture in dimly lit clubs amid the throes of nightlife chaos.

Ziggy Mack

Photography from his ‘Underwater Ballet’ series.

“They kind of … saw something in me,” Mack says with a shrug. “So they gave me an opportunity and camera equipment, and I just started with that.”

Clubs birthed his photography career, but it was when Mack was applying to grad school in Chicago in 2012 that he was forced to up the ante.

“I was trying to get into law school, and I needed a crazy gimmick. So I thought, ‘Well, people love ballet,’ even though I didn’t particularly love ballet. But hey, I’ll get good at it,” said Mack.

Mack not only got good at ballet photography, he fell in love with ballet. The element of water was added later as an homage to a past relationship.

“I was definitely drowning in love,” said Mack, throwing in another shrug.

Though Mack’s marriage of ballet and underwater photography has served him well, like so many other artists in Memphis, finding his bearings in a notoriously competitive field was challenging.

But what does it mean to be a Black artist on the move in a town hampered by inequality and lack of access. Was it any different?

“This is kinda tricky, right?” Mack said. “In terms of accessibility, I would give it a two or a three. But, the thing is — it forces you to work harder. It forces you to be better than where you currently are.”

Mack acknowledges that there’s always an underlying thought that artists wanting to carve a career should leave Memphis, especially Black artists. Mack notes that he’s heard from Black artists of all mediums who’ve left, and they relay to him a sense of total shock.

“They’ll tell me, ‘Man, people are hiring me for the absolute bare minimum.’ I’m used to working so, so hard,” said Mack.

For Mack, his second break came through his friendship with Memphis-based photographer Joey Miller. “If he wasn’t there to introduce me and say, ‘Hey, he’s a good person, his work is great’, I could very well be doing the exact same thing as when I started.”

Mack knows that, while he is talented, he was also fortunate to have the connections that helped propel him forward. He also knows not every Black artist in Memphis has those connections.

“It’s not even a glass ceiling; it’s a glass wall,” said Mack. “You can see through it, you can make a lateral move, but you can’t go through. It’s crazy.”

Andrea Gutierrez

Kevin Brooks

Kevin Brooks: Just Keep Filming
When Kevin Brooks was about 6 years old, he watched The Matrix.

Seventeen years later, as I’m trying to forget how old I was when The Matrix came out, Brooks is perched on a chair in a coffee shop explaining how that movie sparked his interest in film.

When talking about The Matrix, Brooks gets excited all over again, as though he just watched Keanu don the trademark black Neo sunglasses for the first time.

“It was visually inspiring, but at the same time, it had so many philosophical messages. Of course, I didn’t understand those right away, when I was 6, but over time I did,” said the Memphis filmmaker. “To this day, those are the types of films I want to make.”

Brooks’ short film, Keep Pushing, is both visually enticing and has a hidden moral. While shots of  soaring skateboards slice through the frame, the story’s protagonist embarks on his new-found love for skating, only to learn that he initially, well, kinda sucks.

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“The message is persistence through adversity,” noted Brooks. If this sounds like a common theme in storytelling, that’s because it is. But there was wizardry in the delivery, and executives at the Sundance Film Festival took notice.

Keep Pushing was selected as one of five films out of 300 internationally submitted for Sundance Ignite, a program created for up-and-coming filmmakers.

Since the short film’s premiere, Sundance has kept in touch with Brooks, inviting him back this year to work behind the camera, interviewing hip-hop artist Common and actor/writer Jenny Slate. Brooks also interviewed Tim Robbins and his son, Jack, who released his own movie at Sundance.

Brooks just graduated in December from the University of Memphis with a degree in film, and if the pace of his career is overwhelming to him, he doesn’t show it.

Following the release of Keep Pushing, his short film, Marcus, was a top 10 finalist for the Memphis Film Prize. His next short film, Myles, produced by Memphis filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox, will be released in April. He’s currently working on a full-length feature film, the details of which are very much under wraps.

When I asked Brooks about how he sees Memphis as an environment for Black artists, his positivity was immediate and genuine.

“I think it’s definitely getting better,” he said, as he started to tick off names of Black artists producing work that he admires.

“Pay attention to Lawrence Matthews, aka Don Lifted, a 24-year-old musician and aspiring filmmaker,” he said. “Watch for Bertram Williams on stage at Hatiloo Theatre. Listen for Jas Watson’s spoken word. They’re making a difference.”

Brooks’ prescription for bettering Memphis for Black artists syncs up with his personal philosophy: Just keep producing at all costs, and don’t be deterred by what the person next to you is doing.

“Look, we can now shoot movies on 4K on our iPhones, and that’s just one example,” said Brooks. “Whatever you have to do, just tell your story. Showcase the human condition. That’s what I try to do, and I feel like that’s the responsibility we all have as Black artists.”

Angie Nicole

Siphne Sylve

Siphne Sylve: Art Is in the Structure
Think back for a minute to high-school biology, if you were fortunate/ cursed enough to take it. The basic function of every cell in our body is to take in nutrients and raw materials and, through a series of complicated reactions, produce life-sustaining energy and respiration.

I’m convinced that somewhere in Siphne Sylve’s cellular makeup, there’s a unique structure that takes in, oh, I don’t know, smog or something equally grimy and synthesizes it into pure, raw talent.

“I want to be sure that anything I do as an artist continues to ignite new paths of thought and it continues to ignite the idea of upliftment,” Sylve said.

When she’s not managing a project through her position at UrbanArts Commission, the New Orleans native paints, DJs, crafts spoken-word poems, beatboxes, and busies herself with her next visual art installation.

As I read off her lists of talents to her, I jokingly asked, “Is that it?” Sylve laughed and said, “Um, I’m not a dancer? I don’t claim that in any type of way.”

But she does do nearly everything else, and that much was obvious to the UAC when they snatched her up in 2013. But managing projects there was not enough for Sylve. And though her own art is relatively hard to find, save for her murals along portions of the Greenline, Sylve said that this will soon change.

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“Right now, I’m in the process of creating a stronger portfolio and just really taking time to make more visual art.”

There’s a traceable theme to Sylve’s body of work: the intricacies of design. “I love the structure of things,” Sylve said. “I like to know how things are made, how things are built. That’s the bulk of my work. And whether it’s a freelance piece or something I’m making for myself, I have to know the history of something, even if I don’t use it in the work itself.”

This love of structure bleeds into the music Sylve creates as well. She thinks back to Friday nights at home as a kid, pointer finger hovering over the boombox, waiting to catch the missing track for her latest masterpiece cassette mix. Then as now, it’s all about the structure.

So, when it came time to ask her the question that I asked all artists for this story — namely how they saw Memphis as an environment for Black artists — I prepared myself for a multi-pronged answer focused through the lens of someone obsessed with the structure and history of everything in her world. I was not disappointed.

“I feel like identity for artists is an ongoing thing, especially for female Black artists. The history when it comes to artists of color, especially female artists of color, as it relates to exposure. … Well, I didn’t learn about Black female artists making art until I was about 18.”

At 18, Sylve was enrolled as a freshman at Memphis College of Art. There weren’t exactly chapters in textbooks dedicated to Black female artists. Their visibility wasn’t apparent.

“Everything I learned about [Black female artists], I either learned from my peers or I learned on my own,” recalled Sylve.

Sylve does feel like there is something happening between Black artists in Memphis, Black visual artists in particular. Something unifying. Acknowledging the local and national history where Black voices have been seldom heard (Yes, I’m looking at you Purple Restaurant Week hopeful), Sylve feels a growing sense of hope. It may take two or three years, but Sylve does sense a shift on the horizon.

“While there is a lot of unity happening,” Sylve said, “the coverage is scarce.” She said that she typically find outs about Black artists almost exclusively through word of mouth. She added, “I do think that the support is growing. The awareness is growing as well. The hope is to not let our experiences go overlooked.

“I think that sets Memphis apart from the larger context of Black artists in America. And through this unity and awareness that’s occurring, I think we have a whole new generation that’s willing to take this work and move forward.”

Let’s hope Memphis is smart enough to take notice.

Artists speak: Who You Should Watch For

Ziggy recommends:

Kenneth Wayne Alexander II
Graphic Design, Illustrator

Kevin recommends:

Lawrence Matthews, aka Don Lifted
Musician, Visual Artist

Jas Watson
Poet, Artist

Bertram Williams
Actor

Siphne recommends:

Allyson Truly
Actor, Poet, Filmmaker

Brittney Bullock
Maker, Designer

Catherine Patton
Poet

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Cover Feature News

Bus Stopped: The Battle over Route 31

Georgia A. King, 76, is a Memphian who needs her floral-decorated cane to assist in her instantly recognizable, purposeful stride. Whenever she steps out of her apartment near Victorian Village, she is likely to encounter grins and hugs from other Memphians as she makes her way around to her various destinations.   

Most call her “Mother King,” a moniker earned from her reputation, built by decades of organizing work for Memphis’ poor and her involvement with the civil rights movement.  

Since she herself relies on public transportation, pushing for equitable public transportation is high up on King’s exhaustive list of interests and pet projects.

Shortly after the Occupy Memphis protests of 2011, King formed a Transportation Task Force, which would become the Memphis Bus Riders Union in early 2012.

later evolve into the MBRU.

No matter where she is in Memphis — or what else is occupying her time — she watches the Memphis Area Transit Authority buses. “I watch for everything. Is the bus let down for disabled passengers? Does the driver look tired? Are the buses running when they are supposed to?”

King is not alone in her vigilance. She is joined by the other members of MBRU as well as the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 713. Together they monitor the pulse of MATA, and right now one of their major concerns is restoring access to the historic, and once well-used Route 31 Crosstown, which was discontinued in 2013.

Crosstown 31 ran primarily along Cleveland and connected many North and South Memphis neighborhoods. For months, members of MBRU have been knocking on doors in tucked-away neighborhoods that used to bookend the 31. Demographically, these neighborhoods are majority black and marked by the all-too-familiar poverty that disproportionately strangles many black neighborhoods in Memphis.  

Armed with clipboards, volunteers with MBRU have been asking residents to sign their name to a petition and endorse the restoration of Crosstown 31.  

So far, they have more than 1,700 signatures, roughly 900 or so shy of the estimated number of riders that rode Route 31 daily for work and to get necessities, such as groceries, before it was discontinued.

The signatures are important, but they can only change so much, which is why Mother King is hoping city officials are watching and listening to the efforts of the two unions. After all, she says, “If the only people protesting are the ones that need this route, nothing will get done.”

Ron Garrison, CEO of MATA, stands in front of a trolley.

The Cut

When the decision was made to eliminate the 31 in 2013, MATA was facing a $4.5 million deficit in its yearly operating budget. MATA’s then chief executive officer, William Hudson, said that route eliminations would be necessary in order for MATA to continue to operate. Among other route changes that were made that year, a new route No. 42 Crosstown was created that combined and replaced Route 10 Watkins, Route 43 Elvis Presley, and the Crosstown 31.

At the time, Hudson defined vulnerable routes as ones with a low ridership, specifically 25 or fewer customers per hour. However, study findings in the Short Range Transit Plan, a transit study produced by independent consulting firm Nelson/Nygaard just two years prior to its cut, showed Crosstown 31 as Memphis’ third highest-used bus route, with an average of 2,600 riders daily. The route was second only to the 43 Elvis Presley, which funneled 2,700 daily riders between the heart of the city and South Memphis neighborhoods.

If you spread 2,600 riders over 19 hours of operation, the 31 had an average of 136 riders per hour. Unless there was a drastic (and undocumented) decline in Route 31’s ridership in the two years between the study findings and the route’s elimination, the old Crosstown route didn’t fit Hudson’s definition of low ridership.  

A few years later, it wasn’t the number of daily riders that MATA officials pointed to in defending the cutting of Route 31. Rather, it was a finding of the same SRTP study that said MATA would save funds by combining two of its five highest-used routes.

Very Long Walks, Very Few Stops

In a September 2016 guest column in The Commercial Appeal, MATA’s CEO, Ron Garrison, acknowledged the movement to restore Route 31 and pointed to the SRTP study findings that said “at the time” MATA would save money forming the new No. 42 Crosstown — which also connects North and South Memphis — by eliminating duplicate routes while still being able to adequately serve customers on both ends.

“Fast forward to today, and MATA still serves those communities with Route 42 and six other routes,” Garrison wrote, specifically referring to the New Chicago and Riverview-Kansas neighborhoods.

At last count, there are 1,700 petition signatures that say otherwise.  

“There’s definitely no proof of that,” said Carnita Atwater, the executive director of the New Chicago Community Development Corporation. “Because the 42 won’t circle around some of these neighborhoods.”

Atwater keeps frequent tabs on the residents of the New Chicago area through her work at the NCCDC. Half community center and half museum, the NCCDC is a bustling hub within an economically depressed area. From the building, you can see the towering smokestack of the long-closed Firestone Tire and Rubber Company — a reminder that steady jobs were once considerably more plentiful in the area. Now many of the residents are dependent on the bus to reach their jobs.

Atwater says MATA’s new route isn’t working. “I can tell you that many people have lost their jobs because of [the elimination of] Route 31. We did questionnaires after, and we can verify that.”

Like King, Atwater’s concern is focused on the dozens of smaller neighborhoods that the new Crosstown route doesn’t directly extend to and that feeder routes don’t regularly reach.  

“Most people out here don’t even own a bicycle, and walking to the nearest stop certainly isn’t always an option,” Atwater says. And jobs aren’t her only concern.

“Another major concern is families not being able to go into other communities to see family members. And churches. If you live in North Memphis, but your church is in South Memphis, you’re out of luck, come Sunday.”

According to Google Maps, 60 churches are directly on or within a few blocks of the old Route 31.

Down the line in South Memphis, the Riverview-Kansas neighborhood tells a similar tale. Just like New Chicago, recent census data shows the South Memphis neighborhood to be majority black and with a disproportionate amount of residents living in poverty and with a high unemployment rate.

The Riverview-Kansas area wa s once the south loop for Route 31, and it shares the challenges that New Chicago has with MATA’s 31 replacement plan: lots of residential pockets that would require a resident to either walk an hour or more —  and cross over an interstate — to access the new Crosstown route, or use multiple bus transfers.  

Neither one of those options work for those facing some degree of immobility, or for those who are so financially strapped that transfers must be carefully budgeted.

In fact, data gathered by the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a research-based think tank for urban sustainability, shows the costs of public transportation for residents living in both neighborhoods comprises more than 20 percent of their take-home income.

Coming Soon to Crosstown …

The opening date for the Crosstown Concourse in the former Sears building has been set for May 2017, and among what have been dubbed as the “founding tenants” is Church Health Center, which has as its primary purpose serving the working poor. Its new location in the Concourse means that affordable health care is shifting a few blocks north from the health center’s current location on Peabody, to a location more in the middle of the Midtown/downtown area.  

For the new Crosstown bus route, the question becomes whether or not the route and its feeders can efficiently and economically bring residents from New Chicago and Kansas-Riverside to the Concourse for health-care access, not to mention the hundreds of jobs that will be available in the area once the Concourse opens.

“Crosstown, interestingly enough, was called Crosstown because it was once the easiest place to get to in Memphis,” says Church Health Center founder Scott Morris. “It was once where the trolley lines crossed, and so it was the easiest place to get to in Memphis.”

In Morris’ view, current public transit deficits have resulted from a mixture of decades of underfunding and a lack of creativity and cutting-edge solutions from previous administrations.  

“I’ve looked at their finances over time, and I don’t know how they do what they do,” said Morris.  

For the purposes of the CHC, Morris is more concerned that Memphians reliant on public transit have the routes they need to get to school and work.  

“The number one predictor of anyone’s health and outcome is their education, not their doctor,” says Morris. He says that most of the CHC’s patients, at the very least, have their transportation to work figured out, since a person must be employed to receive services from the CHC. But Morris is still concerned about the problems associated with the loss of Route 31 and the problems concerning MATA as a whole.

Referring to Garrison as “intriguing,” Morris says he has spent enough time around MATA’s leader to determine that he “doesn’t have his head stuck in the sand.” While Morris isn’t entirely familiar with all of the dynamics of restoring Route 31, he says it’s a conversation that neither he nor Garrison is ignoring.

Morris says that solutions offered in lieu of Route 31 work for some, but not all. He adds, particularly around Crosstown, that people are “thinking long and hard and deep about this issue.  

“I met with Garrison last week, and I was saying, ‘We have to make this work for everyone at Crosstown. It can’t be just about the middle- and upper-class people who are coming there to work,'” said Morris, who continued to say, “I was singing to the choir when I was talking to him. My personal feeling was that he got it.”

Elena Delavega, PhD, University of Memphis Department of Social Work. Research published August 15, 2014.

What Everyone Agrees On (Money, Money, Money)

What’s to be done — if anything is to be done — about communities affected by Route 31’s elimination remains to be seen.

But, if there’s one sentiment that MBRU, Local 713, Morris, and Garrison can all agree upon, it’s that decades of inadequate funding of Memphis’ buses have created a swath of problems without clear solutions.

Route 31 has become a focal point for conversation and action, but it’s also just one problem in a public transit system that’s beleaguered by an aging fleet, outdated infrastructure, inadequate bus stop shelters, and sometimes inconsistent stops on established routes.

Where there are inadequate transit services, poverty is sure to follow, as we know from mountains of data compiled over the years. The most recent poverty figures (compiled in 2014 by data guru Elena Delavega at the University of Memphis) shows a startling income disparity between those who drive to work and those who use public transportation.  

Residents living in the major Memphis metropolitan area who drive to work have a median income of $34,199. The median income for those who use public transit is just $16,450.

If that bus rider’s median income supports more than one person, they are officially below the poverty line. While, it’s unclear how many children living in poverty rely on a public-transit dependent adult, the links between transportation access and earning capacity are statistically quite apparent.

How much can Garrison do to fix the system? His course of action is ultimately tied to how much money the city council is willing to put into MATA’s budget.

In the meantime, the city’s two transportation unions plan to keep pushing to publicize the challenges facing citizens dependent on public transportation — and for the money to address the issues.

Until that happens, citizens like Georgia King plan to keep watching the buses. “This isn’t about one person, this is about us as a city,” she says. “We’re locked in together. We’d love to get out, but we can’t … so here we are.”