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We Recommend We Recommend

Backbeat’s Red, White, and Brew Tour

Have you ever wished you could see Memphis through the eyes of a tourist? Or maybe through beer goggles? Or better still, through the eyes of a tourist wearing beer goggles? If so, Meagan May of Backbeat Tours wants to help you fulfill that fantasy.

“One of our constant goals at Backbeat is to help locals play tourist in their own city,” she says. “We have music tours, history tours, ghost tours, walking tours, and bus tours.” Last year, over the Fourth of July holiday, Backbeat also launched its first beer tour — Red, White, and Brew. Now it’s back for a second installment and looks like it’s destined to become a semi-annual event.

“It was so wildly popular we ended up doing another one in November and started getting calls last month about the Red, White, and Brew tour for this year,” May says.

Backbeat’s Red, White, and Brew tour departs from B.B. King’s on Beale and goes straight to High Cotton Brewing Co. in the Edge neighborhood for a brewery tour, sample tasting, and souvenir glass. The next tasting, at Memphis Made Brewing in Cooper-Young, includes delivery pizza from Aldo’s.

“Last year, I think we had only one out-of-town couple, and the rest were locals,” May says. “That’s what we’re aiming for again this year.”

As is often the case with Backbeat, live music is provided on the bus.

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Style Sessions We Recommend

Style Secrets

julia.jpg

Justin Fox Burks

First, can we all agree that a martini glass makes a great accessory? It’s really too bad they’re relegated to nights and weekends, but maybe that’s part of what gives them their appeal.

When I “Mad Men-ified” myself (“Mad Menned”?) recently, I totally gave the Mad Me a little martini glass to carry around. It was either that or Don Draper …

Oh, right, you’re here talk about the clothes. I thought this was really simple but very elegant. We all know how I feel about white pants, and little black top is the more casual cousin of the little black dress.

But Julia McDonald was downright cute when we asked her about it.

“You want me to tell you the brands?” she asked. “That will give away the secret of my cheap shopping.”

In the end, we wrested the brands out of her (turns out martini glasses are good for that, too) and she told us her top was from Express and her pants were from the Loft. To finish the outfit, she added a pair of Coach sunglasses.

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News

New Desegration Order Causes Controversy in Shelby County Schools

AP — Officials in Shelby County, Tenn., complain they’ll have to spend millions to satisfy a federal judge’s “arbitrary” desegregation order. It’ll mean busing minority students up to an hour away and replacing hundreds of white teachers with black ones, they say.

In Huntsville, Ala., under a similar court order, students can transfer from a school where they’re in the racial majority, but not the other way around.

“So which ruling do I violate?” asks a perplexed Bobby Webb, superintendent of schools in Shelby County, where Memphis is located. “The judge’s ruling now, or the earlier rulings that we can’t discriminate against people on the basis of the color of their skin?”

Front-page court battles over integration are mostly a thing of the past. But according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, there are at least 253 school districts still under federal court supervision in racial inequality cases and those are just the ones in which Justice intervened.

Many of the more infamous names Boston, Little Rock, Charlotte, N.C. are gone from the list, having satisfied judges with their desegregation efforts and being granted what’s called “unitary status.” In the last two years alone, at least 75 districts have won such status …

Read entire article.

— Allen G. Breed

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Some African Americans have raised the question about Barack Obama, “Is he black enough?” But the young senator also may have a problem in that he is not white enough for a lot of Americans who I think are not ready to accept a man of color as president. This is sad. If Obama got the Democratic presidential nomination, I would gladly vote for him rather than any of those no-good Republicans.

I may be wrong, and I hope I am, but white racism has been driven underground. Few white people today will voice even a legitimate criticism of an African American lest they lose their job or get crucified by the press and be branded a racist. But just because people keep silent or even maintain a facade of tolerance doesn’t mean that prejudice has been extinguished. We would be far better off if white people felt free to express their true opinions. Then, at least, we would know where everybody stands.

There is no genuine debate in America on the subject of race. Like the state of Israel, the subject is forbidden if it involves criticism or dissent from the politically correct views. This is not good. Hidden prejudice is difficult to combat.

Thomas Jefferson said words to the effect that lies or errors are not to be feared as long as people are free to debate them. Prejudice of any kind is, after all, an error in thinking. These days it is equated with hate, but that, too, is an error. A person can be prejudiced but not hate what he’s prejudiced against. People can hate without being prejudiced. The point is that errors in thinking can be corrected if people are free to discuss them. Hate, which is an emotion, is another problem altogether. Haters generally hate everybody, often including themselves.

Senator Obama was lionized at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He has become a celebrity and draws nice crowds at his personal appearances. But he remains far behind Hillary Clinton in the polls despite the fact that he is twice as intelligent and thoughtful, and, no doubt about it, he would make a far better president.

True, he is jug-eared and sounds often too professorial, and many Americans today are looking for stars rather than leaders. But I believe the hidden wall is simply prejudice against the idea of an African American as president.

Right up through and long after the War Between the States, the belief that African Americans were inferior was universal. The North was as prejudiced as the South. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French observer, noted of America that “the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the states which have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known.” Even Abe Lincoln expressed his belief that African Americans were inferior and could never live as equals among whites.

Such deeply ingrained beliefs are difficult to get rid of, especially if, as we have done, we have created a situation where everyone feels compelled to hide them.

As I said, I sincerely hope that I am wrong about this. Obama would clearly be superior to Hillary Clinton or to any of the Republicans, with the exception of Ron Paul. Nevertheless, I fear the senator is too white for some blacks and too black for some whites.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Mishap Match-ups

Memphis ought to get a patent on black-white partnerships that go bad.

When such marriages are made in the name of minority participation, some people more idealistic than I am see harmony, justice, and the way forward. I see politicians morphing into consultants, influence about to be monetized, promising careers derailed, and indictments waiting to happen.

Wanda Halbert and Bruce Thompson are the latest in a long list of ebony-and-ivory combos. Going back only 20 years, other mishap match-ups include “Speedy” Murrell and Charles McVean; Harold Ford Sr. and C.H. Butcher Jr.; Willie Herenton and MLGW bond underwriters; Tim Willis and NBA Now; John Ford and TennCare contractors; and Edmund Ford, Rickey Peete, and Joe Cooper.

In 2004, Thompson, a white Shelby County commissioner, and Halbert, a black Memphis school board member, teamed up to help a Jackson, Tennessee, contractor who was bidding on a school construction project. The script was familiar: Contractor needs minority participation to get votes. Commissioner plays consultant. Board member gets “campaign contribution.” FBI smells payoff. Halbert gets called before federal grand jury. And Thompson gets bad publicity and hires defense attorney Leslie Ballin.

Halbert and Thompson were both protégés of former school board powerhouse Sara Lewis. Halbert was an energetic and ambitious young school board member. Thompson was a fresh political face from the business world, representing East Memphis. Lewis ran Shelby County’s Head Start operation from 1998 to 2000, and Thompson was on the board. What looked like a promising mix of young and old and black and white has become, instead, the latest public scandal.

Memphians have seen this movie before.

In 1987, businessman McVean was pushing state legislation and a local referendum to legalize horseracing. He befriended liquor-store owner and political wheeler-dealer J.P. “Speedy” Murrell to gin up black voter support. The legislation and referendum passed, but McVean got indicted, and although his case ended with a hung jury, horseracing in Memphis was dead.

In 1990, then-Congressman Harold Ford was tried in federal court on corruption charges tied to Butcher, an East Tennessee banker. Butcher and his partners owned land on Mud Island. According to the government, Ford helped get the bridge to Mud Island built as a favor to Butcher and his friends. Ford’s first trial ended in a mistrial, and his second trial ended with his acquittal.

In 2002, Herenton got tired of seeing MLGW send most of its lucrative bond underwriting business to New York. He made a clumsy pitch for keeping more of it in Memphis and Little Rock, where black lawyers could get more of the action. According to Herenton, his complaint sparked a grand jury investigation targeting him.

Also in 2002, ex-con and self-styled consultant Willis was hired as the minority partner to help sell the NBA to Memphis. The campaign succeeded, but Willis made history for something else. In 2003 he began working with federal agents looking at corruption in Shelby County Juvenile Court, where Willis had some contracts. The FBI broadened its investigation to Nashville, and Willis became the star undercover operative for E-Cycle Management. Among those he helped snare were “consultants” John Ford, Roscoe Dixon, and Kathryn Bowers. All three black lawmakers were fooled by the FBI’s fake black-white management team and the promise of big money.

John Ford was already making more than $800,000 as a consultant for TennCare contractors Doral Dental and United American HealthCare. What could he deliver for those Midwestern companies? Votes, customers, and state contracts, of course.

In 2006, city councilmen Edmund Ford and Rickey Peete got into the game. Their white benefactor was lobbyist Joe Cooper, who represented billboard owner William Thomas on a zoning matter before the council. Cooper got nailed in another case, started cooperating with the feds, and Peete and Ford got indicted.

Minority participation was supposed to share the wealth in a town that was rigged to the benefit of white businesses. Instead it has become a rationale for biracial greed, cynicism, and corruption.

John Branston is a Flyer senior editor.

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News

“Memphis is Also America”

The Nation posted an article online today from its April 22, 1968 issue. The essay, by Pat Watters, takes a hard look at Memphis — its white leadership, its newspapers, its racism — in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination earlier that month.

It’s quite illuminating. An excerpt: His movement, his life were Southern; but Memphis, where he died, symbolized more than the South. Its racial crisis of 1968 and its murderous failure were those of all America.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. went there during the fifth week of a garbage workers’ strike that had built into a civil rights movement and a dangerous crisis. The Memphis Negro community had not developed much of a civil rights movement during the early 1960s. So the movement that did come in 1968 capsuled into a few swift weeks the decade’s history of white America’s failure to respond to the nonviolence of Dr. King, and black America’s recoil into despair and a violence of desperation …

Read it all at The Nation‘s website.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

LaSimba Gray to Congressional Black Caucus: “Stay Out” of 9th District Race

According to
Roll Call, a Washington, D.C. publication for political insiders, the
Rev. LaSimba Gray is asking members of the Congressional Black Caucus to “stay
out” of the 2008 Democratic primary race pitting incumbent 9th
District congressman Steve Cohen against repeat challenger Nikki Tinker.

Noting an appearance in Memphis last weekend on Cohen’s behalf by U.S. Rep.
Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, who is black, Gray said, according to the
newspaper, “”Steve
Cohen has been quoting many of them heavily and bringing them into the district
and we are simply asking them to stay out of this race.”

Gray strove unsuccessfully during the 2006 congressional race to winnow down a
large field of African-American candidates to a consensus black
candidate to oppose Cohen, who, as the minister noted, is both white and Jewish.

Roll Call quoted Gray as contending that the second-place finish in last
year’s primary of Tinker, a corporate attorney, meant that “she has won … the
primary of African-American candidates.” Gray said further, “The road has been
cleared for Nikki and we are busy meeting with candidates who ran last time to
show them the reality — the fact that with all of them in the race they can’t
win.”

Gray’s concept of a black-versus-white showdown was frowned on by Cleaver
spokesman Danny Rotert, who remarked that Cohen seemed to stand high in the
estimate of his constituents and observed, “If somebody here [Kansas City] said
Congressman Cleaver can’t represent his district because it’s a [majority] white
district, that would not go very far. So it’s too bad that that’s the rhetoric
that’s being used in Memphis.”

As of the last Federal Election Commission filing, Roll Call noted,
Tinker had $172,000 in cash on hand compared to Cohen’s $374,000. As the
periodical also observed, the feminist organization Emily’s List, which supported Tinker
strongly in 2006, has so far been non-committal about 2008.

A number of Tinker’s former Memphis supporters have also indicated they will not
be backing her in next year’s race. One such, lawyer Laura Hine, said she had
committed to Tinker in 2006 before Cohen made his candidacy known. Affirming her
support for Cohen in next year’s race, Hine said recently, “The fact is, he’s
been a very effective congressman, speaking to all the issues I care about.”

One such issue, according to Hine, was pending federal Hate Crimes legislation,
which Cohen has backed and Tinker has been silent about. Rev. Gray recently made
an effort to organize opposition to Cohen’s stand among black ministers, on the
ground that the bill would muzzle their opposition to homosexuality.

Other
local African-American ministers, like the Rev. Ralph White and the Rev. O.C.
Collins Jr., have refuted that allegation, citing specific sections of the bill,
and made a point of supporting Cohen. The Memphis chapter of the NAACP also
recently affirmed its support of the bill and Cohen’s activities on its behalf.

Categories
Opinion

One Vote at a Time

There is always a grain if not a rock of truth in everything Mayor Willie Herenton says, no matter how unpopular. He’s right about this: If you are going to stay in Memphis for a while — and not everyone is — then you will have to look at things differently.

Last week, I became a big fan of the Memphis NAACP. They lost but they looked good doing it, and they showed class. No organization or individual had more reasons to be partisan in last week’s election. The NAACP was co-plaintiff in the 1991 lawsuit that abolished mayoral runoffs. Not one but two favorite sons were in the race for mayor: Herenton, a trailblazer since he was a school principal in the 1970s, and Herman Morris, NAACP chairman from 1992 to 2000. Both are black. Carol Chumney isn’t.

But the NAACP’s election-day efforts were all about turnout, not any particular candidate. They lost only in the sense that turnout in the 54 precincts they targeted was not as good as they hoped it would be. In fact, it was dismal — 38 percent overall and in the teens in some target precincts.

Spartan simplicity is not always the rule at local nonprofits, but it is at the NAACP. Their little office on Vance is right across from the Cleaborn Homes housing project. On a day of excess, partisanship, and pack journalism, what better place for a reporter to view the election than a place with no cameras, no candidate signs or leaflets allowed, no bar, and no buffet? And no big screen. The only television was a 12-inch model with an antenna. Lean too close to read the numbers, and it stuck you in the eye. Move it, and you messed up the picture.

Beneath portraits of local NAACP heroes Maxine Smith, Vasco Smith, Benjamin Hooks, and Jesse Turner, volunteers worked on three clunky Compaq computers that were probably rejected by E-Cycle Management. Others worked the phones, reading from a printed script (“We’re calling on behalf of the Memphis branch NAACP to encourage you to vote today for the candidate of your choice”) and offering a ride to the polls. Forget public-service announcements and editorials; in the trenches, turnout means one vote at a time.

By mid-afternoon, the numbers coming in were not good. Wearing a yellow T-shirt that said “Lift Every Voice and Vote,” NAACP executive secretary Johnnie Turner looked worried. With five hours to go until the polls closed, nearly every precinct was hundreds of votes short of its turnout goal.

“Last year, we made almost all of our goals, but the way this is looking, people are not turning out,” said Turner, who has run the Voter Empowerment Project since 2000.

She was writing down numbers and doing the arithmetic, which was considerable. The goal was a 5 percent increase in each precinct. The 1999 election was chosen as the benchmark because the 2003 election was a Herenton blowout with a 23.7 percent turnout. That bar was too low. Or so Turner thought. Now, Asbury, Alcy, Glenview, Gaston — site after site — wasn’t coming close to the 1999 turnout, much less the hoped-for increase.

“We’ll have to regroup,” Turner said. “This election has been strange. I started to say divisive, but maybe it’s kind of polarized. Anytime the community sees discord, they take the attitude ‘I don’t want to be part of this mess.'”

When I went out to eat, I got to watch my first live shooting in a while. At Cleaborn Homes, a young man in a white T-shirt was running between the buildings. Another man with a pistol was chasing him and firing several shots from about 30 feet away, all of which missed. A minute later, the guy who’d been shot at walked past my car with the nonchalance of someone who had just missed getting sprayed with a water hose.

When I came back, Turner had made an executive decision. The original goal had been “overly ambitious.” The new goal would be the 2003 turnout plus 7 percent. In effect, the former teacher was lowering the grading curve.

“Now this is more like it,” Turner said as the polls closed and new numbers came in. “We’re going to make it.” As it turned out, however, the 1999 standard may have been unattainable, but it was not unrealistic. The overall turnout for the election was higher — more than 165,000 voters last week compared to 163,259 in 1999.

At 9 o’clock, when the first returns showed Herenton far ahead and Morris in third place, there was no cheering at the NAACP. And no booing. Soon after that, everyone left, except Turner and a few others.

Nice effort, I said on the way out. “Yes,” she said. “Honest.” And it was.

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Cover Feature News

Herman Morris’ Last Dance

At 7:45 at the Holiday Inn-University of Memphis Thursday night, things are quiet. A few folks are meandering in, riding the escalator up to the mezzanine in twos and threes. Kevin Paige and his band are singing “Crazy” in the ballroom.

The crowd, such as it is, is racially mixed and age-diverse. A big screen at the back of the ballroom flashes photographs of candidate Herman Morris and his family — Herman as a young track star, a young lawyer, a family man, etc.

Downstairs in the lobby, the South Carolina-Kentucky game is on a television in the corner. The game is close and exciting, but the numbers crawling across the bottom of the screen give early indication that the race for mayor is going to be neither.

The early voting and absentee totals — almost half the predicted vote — show incumbent Willie Herenton with 43 percent, Carol Chumney at 34 percent, and Morris a distant third, with 24 percent. Those percentages wouldn’t vary significantly all night.

Kevin Paige begins singing “Killing Me Softly.”

The food lines and bar lines in the ballroom are growing quickly. There seems to be little optimism. There are lots of hugs and wry smiles.

At 8:30, with a little more than 20 percent of precincts reporting, the percentages haven’t changed much: Herenton 43, Chumney 32, Morris 25. It’s over. With perfect ironic and, no doubt unintentional, timing, Paige’s band breaks into “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.” Ooops.

Republican maverick Tom Guleff wanders about with 5-year-old son Logan in tow. Adman Dan Conaway sips a beer and chats up latecomers. Campaign co-chairman and longtime judge and civil rights activist Russell Sugarman quietly works the door. Memphis schoolboard member Jeff Warren leans over a laptop, checking the discouraging numbers.

Sadly, for this campaign, the only number getting bigger is the number of folks in the ballroom. But their man, Morris, appears doomed to finish a distant third.

With 50 percent of precincts counted, the percentages remain markedly consistent: 42, 33, 24. As the numbers flash on the television screen, someone shouts, “Time for a drink!”

Warren shakes his head ruefully and says, “I’m very disappointed. I think Herman is the one man who could have brought this city together.”

There is a growing brushfire of applause in the outer room. The candidate, surrounded by his wife, children, and family, enters the ballroom. The outpouring of affection seems genuine and more than a little poignant.

Morris steps to the microphone, quiets the crowd, and says, “It’s a great day for Memphis.” But nobody in the room believes him.

Morris continues gamely, thanking his campaign committee and supporters and thanking his wife Brenda for 27 years of marriage. It is, in fact, the couple’s wedding anniversary. Morris presents a large bouquet of red roses to his wife and says, “Happy anniversary.”

The rest of Morris’ speech sounds suspiciously like a hurriedly edited “victory” speech. He repeats the “great day in Memphis” line, and thanks the crowd for playing a part in “bringing the city together.” He implores his supporters to work with the apparent victor, Willie Herenton, and even asks for a round of applause for the mayor.

When the crowd responds weakly, he exhorts them: “We can do better than that!” They do, barely.

“And now,” he says, “let’s have one heck of an anniversary party!”

The band strikes up the old Etta James song, “At Last,” and Herman Morris and his wife dance, staring into each other’s eyes, encircled by photographers and television cameras.

It could have been a helluva party.

As the crowd files out, the television in the corner of the lobby is showing happy women doing “The Electric Slide” at Herenton headquarters. But here at the Holiday Inn nobody feels much like dancing.

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Cover Feature News

Chez Chumney

Carol Chumney ended her campaign for city mayor at 10 o’clock Thursday night, in the same aggressive spirit that distinguished her term on the Memphis City Council. Promising to “work with Mayor Herenton any way I can” in her concession speech, she nevertheless took the opportunity to launch a final volley at the city leadership, saying, “We have sent a message that Memphis deserves better.”

The parting shot at Mayor Herenton rallied the crowd of more than a hundred close supporters and volunteers gathered in the Peabody’s Continental Ballroom, most of whom hadn’t seen their candidate in person since the election results were announced on television. For many, it was clearly a cathartic end to a long and exhausting day.

Earlier, as the first few precinct reports trickled in by word of mouth, the mood at Chumney’s election night party was buoyant, if slightly tense, and continued to remain so even as the early returns showed Mayor Herenton with a significant lead. But by the end of the night, with the outcome all but certain, any trace of that early hope had given way to sore discontent.

“I’m disappointed in the people of Memphis,” said longtime Chumney supporter Zenia Revitz. “I can’t believe that they didn’t open their eyes and see what’s going on in this community.” Her reaction may have best captured the mixed emotions felt by those present, as she quickly qualified her remark by adding, “So far, that is. We’re only at 50 percent,” referring to the number of precincts still uncounted. No one at the event was willing to fully give up the chance of a turnaround until it became unmistakably clear that none would come.

Another strong supporter, Joan Solomon, summarized what many at the party saw as a flawed election process, stating, “Everyone who voted for Morris was voting for Herenton.”

A Rasmussen poll commissioned by WHBQ Fox-13, taken just days before the election, showed that in a two-way race against Herenton, either Chumney or Morris would have won with a comfortable majority. Together, the two candidates provided the embattled mayor with the chance to win a fifth term with 42 percent of the vote.

The message of the Chumney campaign was strongly populist, and as such, their election strategy was centered around volunteer support. Noting in her concession speech that she was “outspent probably about two to one,” the councilwoman credited “hundreds of volunteers” with a large measure of her success. Campaign manager Charles Blumenthal was also quick to praise the campaign’s unpaid workers, calling the operation “a well-oiled machine,” adding that out of 14 full-time staff, only four were paid.

Indeed, it was a different campaign from what one usually sees in Memphis. It began with little money and very little financial support from the business community. What fund-raising momentum there was didn’t come until the final month of the race. Chumney’s largest donations came from labor unions and trade associations, with most of the city’s old money going to Herman Morris.

Also remarkable was the fact that compared with the two other major candidates, few current or former elected officials endorsed Chumney, with only two notables present at the election night event. State representative Mike Kernell, long an ally and friend of Chumney’s, was there, along with freshman Shelby County commissioner Steve Mulroy, who appeared with her onstage. Otherwise, the rest of her support appeared to come from family, friends, activists, and more than a few political neophytes.

While there were more whites than blacks at Chumney’s final campaign stop, Chumney was pleased by the support she received from predominantly black neighborhoods. “There were some [African-American] precincts where I was running at 30 percent,” she said. “It made me feel good.”

After the loss, Chumney was upbeat but expressed disappointment in the low turnout: “The people who didn’t vote should be kicking themselves because this was their chance to make a change.”

Ineligible to run for mayor and City Council at the same time, Chumney is out of public office for the first time in many years. After finishing the remainder of her council term, she said she plans to return to her private law practice, but she was otherwise undecided on any future political plans.

“Who knows?” she said. “We’ll see what the future holds.”