Tag: Willie Herenton

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Little Big Town

I was wandering through the Midtown Kroger on a recent Saturday night. Sounds like the beginning of a really bad novel, right? Or maybe I just have a lousy social life? Neither, actually. We were having friends over the next day and I needed a couple of things, and decided I’d rather go at night than battle the Sunday post-church crowd.

So, there I was, pondering whether or not I needed another package of bacon, when I saw former Mayor A C Wharton, also shopping alone. He was wearing a sharp, pin-striped seersucker suit. Crisp white shirt. No tie. I felt a bit under-dressed.

“Hello, Mr. Mayor,” I said.

“Why, hello,” he responded. “How are you?”

“Pretty good, sir.”

“You have plenty to write about these days, don’t you?”

“I sure do.”

The former mayor went on to mention that he really liked a column I wrote about President Trump’s cabinet meeting — the one where everyone in the room toadied up to Trump with fulsome praise.

“I now require my staff to praise me at the beginning of each meeting,” Wharton said, grinning.

“Good plan,” I said. “I do the same. Keeps them on their toes.”

And on we went about our shopping. It was such a Memphis moment. At that same Kroger I’ve seen tons of Grizzlies players, notable musicians of every stripe (from Stax legends to opera singers to current stars), leaders in the arts and education and theater, congressmen, chefs, hotshot lawyers — you name it. Everybody in Memphis goes Krogering, it seems. It’s the great equalizer.

Ronnie Grisanti’s restaurant at Poplar and Humes was also that kind of place. You’d see Wharton, Harold Ford, Steve Cohen, Willie Herenton, Jerry West, and every Grizzlies coach who ever coached, including the three Italians in a row we once had (Fratelli, Barone, and Iavaroni), each of whom I saw hanging at Ronnie’s bar on many occasions.

It was the center of the Memphis dining universe from the mid-’90s to the mid-aughts, and it was often my habit to go on Tuesdays after we put the Flyer to bed. I never had a boring evening or a bad meal.

And Ronnie was at the center of it all, greeting everyone by name, shuffling you to the bar with a bit of gossip in your ear while you waited for your table. No reservations at Ronnie’s. You showed up and took your chances. And if you were a regular, at some point Ronnie would take your picture and put it on the wall somewhere. Mine was on the men’s room door, but hey, it was there, a badge of honor, a sign I’d made it. Or something.

Ronnie died last weekend, at 79, marking the end of an era. He’d moved his restaurant out to Collierville in recent years, out of my dining comfort zone, but I’m sure it was a nice place, because he was a nice man — larger than life — and he’ll be missed by all who knew him.

I spend my Tuesday nights at another joint now, a cozy, friendly place at Cooper and Peabody, near my house. I call the owners and bartenders my friends. I can’t go there without seeing 10 people I know. And that’s the way I like it, a home away from home. A place where everybody knows your name.

In these tempestuous times, where change comes at the drop of a tweet, it’s good to have traditions and to savor them, like you savor your food and your friends and your family.

And your memories.

Bruce VanWyngarden
brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Book Features Books

Otis Sanford’s From Boss Crump to King Willie.

Between the two giant pillars of Edward Hull Crump, the white Mississippian who established an enduring political dominion over Memphis in the early 20th century, and Willie Herenton, the five-times-elected black mayor whose seeming invincibility concluded that century, lies a tumultuous story worth telling.

And Otis Sanford, the former managing editor of The Commercial Appeal and now holder of the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Economic/Managerial Journalism at the University of Memphis, tells it with accuracy and grace in From Boss Crump to King Willie: How Race Changed Memphis Politics, hot off the University of Tennessee Press.

In a way unusual for a work of history, this book reads like a novel — its facts accounted for both in concise summaries of events and circumstances and in key moments that are rendered as scenes.

Among the latter is an account of how a chance encounter in 1991 between then Congressman Harold Ford and the Rev. Ralph White at a Union Avenue video store resulted in White’s church, Bloomfield Baptist Church, becoming the venue for Ford’s long-postponed “summit meeting” to determine the identity of a consensus black candidate for mayor.

Sanford follows up that revelation with choice reportage of the upstairs meeting at the church involving Ford, Herenton, and disappointed contender Otis Higgs while an auditorium of Herenton supporters, whose energetic wall-to-wall presence had basically called the congressman’s hand, waited impatiently in the church auditorium to hear Ford’s inevitable anointment of Herenton as the people’s choice.

Sanford’s book is a textbook case of how to handle the black-and-white realities of Memphis’ political evolution with appropriate shadings of gray. His narrative concludes before the lengthy period, after Herenton’s ascension to power, of the often grim public and private struggles for preeminence between the African-American mayor and the African-American congressman stemming from the implicit rivalry of these two monumental egos.

But that feud, after all, belongs to a different historical era, post-1991, which has been intermittently post-racial. Consider the overwhelming white support for A C Wharton, an African American, first as Shelby County mayor and, in 2009, as Herenton’s immediate successor as Memphis mayor, or Steve Cohen’s serial victories over black opponents in a 9th Congressional District that is at least two-thirds African American in population, and the comfortable win of Jim Strickland, another white, in 2015 over Wharton in a city whose increasingly black complexion is unmistakable.

Consider the consistent ability of white Republican candidates to prevail over black Democrats in all the Shelby County elections that have taken place in the 21st century, a period when the county at large, like the city, has had a majority-black electorate.

From the standpoint of Sanford’s narrative, such anomalies might be regarded as signals of a modus vivendi between the two dominant races, of a political balance of sorts that required both the deconstruction of white supremacy and the liberation and triumph of an erstwhile black underclass. A viable new order may somehow have been achieved, though undeniable inequalities of various sorts persist and just plain differences endure.

Sanford’s story is one of transformation — from an urban landscape under the domination of Crump, a de facto plantation boss whose quasi-benevolent attitude toward a black population enabled both his own immediate power and the stirrings of that population’s own ultimate abilities and ambitions.

The giant-sized convulsions that belong to the intermediate stages of this saga — the strikes and assassinations and political showdowns — are not overlooked. They are covered in satisfying detail, as are the more nuanced encounters between winners and losers in the chess games of our political history.

Sanford, whose astonishing objectivity as reporter and analyst continues to be featured in his weekly columns in the Sunday CA, knows not heroes and villains. His characters, both black and white, are presented with all the roundness and complex motivations they owned as real live people.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Herenton and Cohen: Still at It

Neither current Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen nor former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton have any intention of hanging it up. 

Those two realities, each with significant bearing on the coming year and beyond, were made evident on the last day of calendar year 2016 when the two familiar public figures each addressed separate public prayer breakfasts. Both made some possible waves with their remarks.

Herenton was the guest key-noter at the first New Year’s prayer breakfast held by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland at the Guest House at Graceland. Though his speech conformed in general to the theme of citizen volunteerism enunciated by Strickland at the event, the former mayor’s most widely noted statements had to do with what he saw as the imperative of the city’s African-American community to improve its circumstances, not by appealing for help from others but through action of its own.

Or, as Herenton, who served from 1992 to 2009 as the city’s first elected black chief executive, put it: “No one can help us if we don’t help ourselves. It’s up to us, to protect us from us.” That was his preamble to a series of statements about urban crime that were bound to be received either as a provocation or as a challenge, depending on the attitude of the listener.

With the fact of a dramatic rise in the Memphis homicide rate serving as the background of his remarks, Herenton made a point of focusing on “black male youth” and “black-on-black crime” and laid a major portion of the burden for addressing the problem on the affected population itself. 

“The people who are shooting, they aren’t riding deep in Germantown and Collierville,” he said. “They’re riding in Orange Mound. They are riding in Binghamton. They are riding in Frayser.”

The public entities normally charged with dealing with crime were “floundering,” said Herenton, who, without mentioning names, cited the offices of the sheriff and the Juvenile Court judge, as well as the Memphis/Shelby County Crime Commission. He went on: “I’ve had some people tell me the answer to this city’s problems would be if we had an African-American mayor. The critics used to say the same things about me. I was the first black mayor, and people would say we need a white mayor. I don’t care what color the mayor is. All I want is a good mayor.”

To the end of enabling Strickland to become just that, Herenton called for 10,000 African-American men to volunteer as mentors for black youth. “They need to help this mayor with blight, tutoring, after-school programs, the Boy Scouts — all kinds of things.” Herenton referred to such a collective effort as constituting a “new path,” a term he also uses to describe his ongoing proposal for model charter-school dormitories in Shelby County for youthful offenders.

• Cohen’s remarks, made some miles away at the Holiday Inn Select on Democrat Road, were the highlight of former City Councilman Myron Lowery‘s annual prayer breakfast.

An advance news release from the Congressman’s office had served as a teaser for the event, promising “a major announcement … regarding his future in the United States Congress.” 

That both addressed existing reports of Cohen’s possible exit from public life and gave them further fuel, but toward the end of his remarks at the breakfast, the Congressman decisively dismissed the prospect.

“There have been some rumors around that I was going to retire,” Cohen said. These, he said, waggishly, citing statesman/financier Bernard Baruch as the author of remarks normally attributed to Mark Twain, had been “greatly exaggerated.” 

Cohen declared categorically: “We’ll be here in 2018, and we’ll be here in 2020. I plan to run for reelection.” He declared he was a better Congressional server today than ever before and said, “I’ll do it as long as you want me to do it.”

The Congressman disclaimed yet another rumor, that he intended a future run for the Senate. “It’s cool to be in the United States Senate,” he said, “[but] this state is red.” Noting his first abortive race for Congress in 1996, when he was defeated by Harold Ford Jr., as well as one for Governor in 1994, Cohen said, “I’ve tilted at windmills before. … I’m not running for another office the rest of my life that I can’t win.”

Vowing always to “speak truth to power,” Cohen warned of imminent dangers to the Affordable Care Act, public education, and the environment resulting from the combination of a Donald Trump presidency and a GOP-dominated Congress.

Cohen said the forthcoming Trump administration has sold out to “Exxon and Russia,” a fact presumably signaled both by Trump’s choice of the giant oil company’s CEO Rex W. Tillerson as secretary of state and by the president-elect’s non-stop flattery of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Noting the Russian government’s dependence on international oil sales, Cohen said, “All they want is to drill the Arctic.”

As for Trump, Cohen said he did not trust “this presidency not to use the IRS or the FBI” as tools against dissenting citizens, and he warned, “When an individual becomes the power and not the country — like Benito Mussolini — that’s fascism.”

In an apparent reference to Congressional Republicans’ intent to have the Constitution read aloud, Cohen said, “I hope when they read the impeachment clause, they understand it.”

Though most of his remarks concerned issues of domestic import, the Congressman made a point of stressing the importance of a “peaceful solution in the Middle East.” Referring to renewed controversy over Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank, Cohen said, “What the Israelis are doing now is wrong. … We need peace there. Israel needs peace.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Pre-Summer Heat in Memphis Politics

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

UPDATED AND REVISED


On Saturday, a day in which the afternoon temperature soared into the 90s, the annual “community picnic” sponsored by longtime political broker and former Shelby County Commissioner Sidney Chism took place, as usual, on the grounds of the Horn Lake Road Learning Center in South Memphis. 

And, as usual, the event attracted active politicians, candidates for political office, and a politically oriented crowd, though attendance seemed somewhat down this year, whether because of the excessive heat or by the relative scarcity of blue-ribbon political contests to come — at least among Democrats, who are normally predominant at these events.

Even so, there were several such pairings to be glimpsed. District 85 District Johnnie Turner was there, for example, as was one of her primary opponents, pastor Keith Williams. General Sessions Clerk Ed Stanton Jr. was there with a sizeable support group, and one idependent opponent, William Chism, was also there — though not Republican challenger Richard Morton.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, his stock buoyed by a recent poll made an appearance, as did former Mayor Willie Herenton, who made a point of praising Shelby County Commission Chairman Terry Roland for supporting the former mayor’s proposal on behalf of two proposed model youth detention facilities in Frayser and Millington.

(Though the proposal was approved 8-2 in a commission vote last Monday, Roland came in for criticism and accusations of “bullying” from a minority of his fellow Republican members who either voted against the proposition or abstained.)

• On the eve of what could well turn out to be a long, hot summer, and with all the crises, ongoing and potential, affecting Memphis, how is the approval rating of Mayor Strickland holding up?

Rather well — or so would a fresh new poll taken on the mayor’s behalf seem to suggest.

A new sampling of public opinion by Public Opinion Strategies, the firm relied on for the Strickland campaign during the 2015 mayoral race, shows the mayor’s approval rating, as of May, 2016, to be 68 percent, with only 15 percent of those polled disapproving.

The sampling is broken down three ways:

*By gender, with 66 percent of men approving and 15 percent disapproving, and with 70 percent of women approving, against 14 percent who disapprove.

*By political party, with 89 percent of Republicans expressing approval and a statistical sample small enough to register as zero disapproving; 65 percent of approval from Democrats, with 17 percent disapproving; and 63 percent of independents approving, as against 19 percent disapproving.

*By race, with whites approving at a rate of 80 percent with only 5 percent disapproval, and with an approval rate of 62 percent among African Americans, 20 percent disapproving.

*And, rather oddly, the poll offers figures for “Northern Districts” (73 percent approval, 13 percent disapproval) and “Southern Districts” (61 percent approval, 17 percent disapproval).

According to Steven Reid, the consultant whose Sutton-Reid firm represented Strickland during his successful 2015 mayoral race, the poll, with a margin of error estimated at 4.9 percent, was conducted with “likely voters” by telephone from May 15th to May 17th, with 25 percent of those sampled contacted by cell phone.  

 

• The office of State Representative Andy Holt (R-Dresden), in an email addressed to the Tennessee media, claimed to have received “death threats” from a Memphis telephone number in the 487 exchange.

According to Holt assistant Michael Lotfi, whose voice is heard along with that of the caller in an MP3 audio sent along with the email, the caller was first heard from at about 5 p.m. on Monday on Holt’s Nashville office telephone and phoned repeatedly thereafter.

In an audio portion of one of the calls, the caller is asked by Lofti whether he owns guns. The caller says he has several, though he does not directly threaten either Holt or Lotfi with them. He does say he intends to be in Nashville on Tuesday morning to “beat [the] ass” of Lotfi, whom he addresses as “bitch.”

The caller does not seem to make a specific death threat, nor does he profess to be a “Democrat,” although Lotfi’s email attempts to brand the caller that way.

A voice similar to that heard on the recording answered when the Flyer called the number listed in the email as the source of the phone calls from Memphis. The person on the line declined to identify himself or to comment on the several alleged conversations with Lotfi, but an online number-tracing service appeared to lead to an individual whose Facebook page is replete not with threats to anyone but with numerous anti-gun postings, including some directly relating to Holt.

The bizarre conversation with Lotfi, the only one of the several allegedly received by Holt’s Nashville office from which a recording was offered, took place in the aftermath of Holt’s announced plan to give away an AR-15 at a forthcoming fund-raiser of his, a pledge Holt (literally) doubled down on a day after the weekend massacre at an Orlando, Florida, gay nightclub that resulted in some 100 casualties, including 50 deaths. An AR-15 was the assassin’s weapon of choice.

In response to the atrocity, Holt promised to give away two such automatic assault weapons for self-defense purposes along with other firearms, as de facto door prizes for attendees at his fund-raiser, entitled “Hogfest.”

As frequently chronicled by the Flyer‘s “Fly on the Wall” columnist, Chris Davis, Holt, a pig farmer, has become something of a cynosure for media attention, much of it negative. In 2015 he was threatened with a $177,000 fine by the Environmental Protection Agency for illegally dumping 860,000 gallons of hog waste into a public stream.

The EPA dropped the fine, conditional upon Holt’s acceptance of a consent decree requiring him to close two lagoons from which the waste had been emptied. The agency reserves the right to re-institute the fine if the agreement is breached.

As Davis noted in an online post on Monday, “Holt, who’s introduced his share of faith-based anti-gay legislation, burned his traffic tickets on YouTube, and showed support for antics perpetrated by the Bundy Ranch militia,” has also made virulent attacks on Ninth District Congressman Steve Cohen (D-Memphis), who, in the wake of the Orlando tragedy, called for legislation banning “all assault weapons and high capacity magazines.”

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Let the Sun Shine In

Who said there was nothing new under the sun? Depending on your religiosity, the answer is either the Almighty Himself or the vaguely cynical old churchman who authored the Biblical text known as “Ecclesiastes.”

In any case, now that we’ve reached a point on the calendar where the sun is more or less reliably shining, let us submit the idea to the proof test.

What’s new? Between the previous warm season and the one we’re now enjoying, the University of Memphis has acquired new coaches for its two major sports programs — football and basketball. One of the newbies is Tubby Smith, who won an NCAA basketball championship at Louisville some years ago and who, as recently as last season, was named “Coach of the Year” for his work at Texas Tech. Considering that, only weeks before Smith was snagged, UM’s basketball program seemed incurably bogged down, with two straight seasons without a post-season tournament for the Tigers and a contract with then Coach Josh Pastner that had come to seem over-endowed (to many disappointed boosters, anyhow), Smith’s acquisition does indeed seem to make the sun shine brighter.

And, on the football side, there’s new coach Mike Norvell, the former offensive coordinator at Arizona State, who comes in this year to replace Justin Fuente, who, in his brief tenure, had returned the University’s football program to a measure of the sunshine it had seemed to lose in the several previous years and had won a) 19 games in a two-year span, b) a conference championship, and c) a major bowl game. Can Norvell do as well? By the reckoning of several people equipped to judge such things, Norvell’s first recruiting class may be the most promising in the nation, and, in a self-introduction of sorts to the Rotary Club of Memphis on Tuesday, the 34-year-old Norvell, the self-described “youngest head coach in college football,” certainly seemed convincing as he talked up his team as a family and promised to lead his young charges to the “next step” on their lives and to “excellence on the field, in the classroom, and in the community.”

A tall order, maybe, but even in making his case, Norvell lit up the room. It is easy to imagine him doing the same on the practice field.

And sometimes old wine comes in new bottles and seems the riper and better for it. At the very time that political figures in Tennessee and various presidential candidates in the nation at large have been urging a revision of our criminal justice system, here comes what we judge to be a bright new idea from former Memphis schools superintendent, former Memphis mayor, former charter-school entrepreneur Willie Herenton, who two weeks ago proposed an innovative scheme to house youthful offenders in pleasant, rehab-focused local surroundings, near their homes and loved ones, rather than in far-off, menacing penal institutions that double as crime schools.

Worth a try, we say, and, best yet, Herenton, who hopes for official state support, isn’t asking local taxpayers to foot the bill.

Let the sun shine in: That’s not exactly a new idea, but it’s still a good one.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Memphis Makes a Change

CREDIT: Toby Sells

Toby Sells

So, Memphis has a new mayor-elect. While many people were surprised at last week’s election results, those with access to various local political insiders were not. Polling numbers had been bandied about sotto voce for weeks, numbers that suggested Jim Strickland had a substantial lead over two-term incumbent A C Wharton. But none of the polling numbers I heard suggested a result in which Strickland would basically double Wharton’s percentage of the total vote.

The easy analysis was that Strickland got the white vote while the three African-American candidates split the black vote. And while it’s true that Strickland’s 42 percent represented only a plurality of the electorate, I think when our crack (ahem) Election Commission finally comes up with the precinct and ward breakdowns, we’ll learn that the results were not so black and white.

Fourth-place finisher Mike Williams, for example, had substantial white support among his constituency, which included the Save the Mid-South Coliseum crowd, Memphis Animal Services activists, the Memphis Police Department, and the anti-pension-cut true believers.

Wharton, too, had white support, especially in Midtown progressive circles and among the business community that financed his campaign. And Strickland’s camp is claiming that the numbers will show that their candidate had a decent slice of the black vote. We shall see, sooner or later. Probably later.

There will be at least six new faces on the Memphis City Council, including a couple of young, white newcomers who were heavily funded by family and business interests. Midtown’s District 5, for example, home to the city’s most liberal populace, will be represented (after a runoff election) by one of two Republicans: Worth Morgan, a poor lad from the wrong side of the tracks, or Dan Springer, who was backed by county Mayor Mark Luttrell, who announced last week that he would manage the local campaign for presidential candidate and professional Christianist sleazeball Mike Huckabee. Ugh.

What happened was that the three progressive candidates in District 5 (Chooch Pickard, Mary Wilder, and John Marek) split the liberal vote, opening the door for Morgan and Springer (both of whom are probably decent fellows, truth be told). But to say they represent progressive interests is probably a stretch.

I was saddened by the cheap shots that former Mayor Willie Herenton took at Wharton after the election. Wharton is a consummate gentleman, full of grace and humor. His concession speech, which I witnessed, was big-hearted and generous. He handled defeat like a winner. He represented the city with class, and we were lucky to have him, especially after enduring Herenton’s tumultuous final years in office. Wharton should leave with his head held high. He has a lot to be proud of.

And I credit Strickland with an equally gracious victory speech. A smooth transition benefits all of us. My hat is off to both men for the way the campaign ended.

Change is inevitable in politics, and change has happened in Memphis. I have confidence that the city is still on the upswing, and I’m hoping Mr. Strickland can keep the best initiatives of our outgoing mayor in place and still make the kind of changes that will fulfill his campaign pledge to more effectively fight crime and blight.

I wish him the best.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Strickland Needs to Cut the Fat

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Mayor-elect Jim Strickland

Congratulations on your victory, Mr. Strickland. As mayor of Memphis, it will be your job to run a city that has many problems. Unfortunately, there is a finite supply of money available to accomplish that goal. If you are to be successful, many of the unnecessary costs of running our city must be cut in order to free up the money needed to do the necessary work. Mayor Willie Herenton built a huge and unwieldy bureaucracy in order to provide jobs for his cronies. Your predecessor, A C Wharton, did nothing to change that. Simply failing to fill existing jobs is not policy; it is a lack of policy. Announcing a policy and doing nothing to implement it doesn’t accomplish anything.

I lived a good portion of my life under the commission form of government here in Memphis. There is little good that can be said for it. However, instead of the more than 100 departments that Mayor Herenton managed to come up with, the Memphis city commission had only six. The mayor under the city commission (who wasn’t a mayor in anything except name) ran the administrative department. One commissioner was in charge of both the fire department and the police department. Another commissioner ran the department of public works, and still another ran the department of public service. There was another whose job I don’t recall, but the point is that we had six departments instead of more than 100. Furthermore, one man ran two of those six departments.

Today, we have departments that are not even within the purview of city government. The job created for Herenton’s disgraced female bodyguard is a case in point. The office responsible for finding employment for convicted felons should be a minor one in the state employment office. It should not be a city department with a huge salary.

We have other departments that we can get along without and still others that we can’t afford to fund. There are many, many departments that need to be consolidated into major departments and relegated to a minor status within those departments.

Each department that you do away with, either by eliminating it completely or by consolidating it into a larger department, will save money — money that is presently used to pay an exorbitant salary to department heads and assistant department heads.

Money can also be saved by eliminating the costs of office space and other incidentals in situations where departments are eliminated or reduced in size. Eliminating automobiles for the department heads and insurance and the salaries for the lower-ranking employees of those departments that are eliminated will add to that cost-savings total.

Finally, the salaries currently paid to high-ranking city employees are not necessary to get top-notch people to fill those offices. Good managers galore have lost their jobs in private industry and will furnish all the qualified help needed to run the city government. They will take a city job at a more modest salary as an alternative to no job at all or one that is beneath their skill levels. Hire some of those people.

While Mayor Herenton was creating all of those unnecessary departments, he was also giving huge salaries to people to do jobs they couldn’t do well. He and his cronies were like a bunch of hogs feeding at the public trough. Four years ago, Mayor Wharton made a big announcement about taking a hard look at city government departments and staffing, but it simply didn’t happen.

I hope that four years from now, I won’t be saying the same thing about your administration. Cutting down the size of city government and reorganizing it into fewer departments will make it more efficient and easier to control.You have a chance to make some tremendous changes for the better in our city government. Please, seize the initiative, and do it now.

Good luck in the fight to trim the costs of city government. All of your supporters will be looking to you for action. Please, don’t let us down.

William T. Mitchell is a life-long Memphian who has been observing local politics for more than 50 years.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Hot Water in Memphis

It was one of those drop-the-microphone, Elvis-has-left-the-building moments that Memphis City Council meetings can sometimes produce: A frustrated councilwoman, Wanda Halbert, verbally blasted stoic Memphis Light Gas & Water President Jerry Collins with an observation that sounded familiar. During a discussion about the city-owned, nonprofit power company’s fees, Halbert said, “Memphis Light Gas & Water belongs to the city of Memphis. It doesn’t belong to Memphis Light Gas & Water. It feels like it does not belong to the City of Memphis. It’s almost like, somehow, you all have evolved into an island of your own!” She then exited the room without waiting for a response. No rebuttal was needed and none came.

Almost the exact description of MLGW’s operational procedures was uttered by our former “forever king,” Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton more than a decade ago. In 2003, Herenton roared, “MLGW is an island unto itself,” in accusing the utility of being wasteful and inaccessible to the needs of customers. Six years earlier, Herenton had tried mightily to convince council members to sell off what is universally acknowledged as the city’s most profitable asset.

Former Flyer columnist John Branston chronicled the story in great detail. Herenton hired a Philadelphia consultant named Rotan Lee, who, for the nice round figure of $150,000, produced a study of the utility’s effectiveness — making a case for privatizing all or parts of the utility, estimated at the time to be worth $800 to $850 million. Lee tried to make the case that community-owned utility companies could no longer be “natural monopolies” in a world where federal deregulation of utilities was becoming the norm. Lee concluded that such utility companies would, in the end, “lose the crucible of good will with their customer base.” In hindsight, Lee’s prediction would appear to rival those of Nostradamus.

Distrust of the utility’s intentions only heightened, when, just after receiving the tongue-lashing from Halbert and other skeptical members of the council, MLGW officials announced they would propose a 2 percent hike in residential water rates to make up for revenue projected to be lost when the Cargill company closes its corn-milling plant on Presidents Island in January 2015. MLGW officials said that Cargill accounted for 5 percent

of the water sold by the utility, leaving a $4 million revenue shortfall to make up. There had been no mention of the rate hike in the council meeting just two days earlier.

To add insult to injury, Cargill is walking away — without any financial penalty — on the four years that remain on a PILOT property tax freeze agreement issued by the city and county in 2010.

What should be even more worrying for MLGW customers is the fact that Roland McElrath is the man behind the plan for the utility’s proposed rate hike. McElrath became the utility company’s controller in 2012 after resigning his post, for the second time, as the city of Memphis finance director. This is the same career numbers-cruncher who, in 2011, assured city council members Memphis could afford to give its city employees Christmas bonuses because of a surplus created by cost-saving measures enacted during the prior fiscal year.

After the council passed a $6.2 million Santa offering, a sheepish McElrath recalculated. Oops. There was actually a $6 million deficit — a shortfall that later ballooned to $17 million — that required the council to dip into dwindling city reserves to cover the overall deficit. This should give all of us, particularly those struggling to pay their bills each month, plenty of reason for pause when it comes to MLGW’s plan to offset lost Cargill revenue.

When most companies lose a valued client, they don’t take it out on the good customers that remain with them. They buckle down and try harder to keep them happy. As MLGW customers, we appreciate the employees’ hard work and dedication whenever power outages hit the city. We appreciate their charity work. We appreciate their moratoriums on bill payments in extreme weather conditions. However, it’s their perceived arrogance and take-it-or-leave-it autonomy that spawns tirades like Halbert’s. Taxpayers pay the hefty salaries of the utility’s management. Aren’t we owed an open accounting of their billing procedures, rather than being suddenly blindsided with a rate hike?

Don’t we all live on the same island?

Les Smith is a reporter for WHBQ Fox-13 News.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Where We Live Now

It was such a moronic statement that when it was blurted from a Memphis City Councilman’s mouth, I thought, “Is he for real?”

It was moments after the end of what had been a sadly disappointing council committee public hearing to listen to ideas about how to remedy the impasse created by the council’s vote to cut health care and pension benefits for city employees and retirees. As I scrambled to get interviews in the hallway to gather some perspective on what happened, the indignant councilman approached me, asking if I wanted to hear his solution to the whole problem. I said yes. He then declined to talk, instead cryptically uttering, “I know where you live.” He then smirked, walked away, and took the elevator down.

It would be easy — we in the media have done it before — to dismiss such an incident as just another cantankerous episode by this council veteran, rather than assume there was some attempt at personal intimidation involved. But, for some reason, as the day and the week went on, I really started to get angry about his remark and his audacity, as a black elected official, to level some “gangsta” innuendo at another African American.

It’s ironic that in the same month we commemorate President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Bill, Memphis continues to suffer from a crisis in African-American leadership — in politics, in economics, and in education.

I remember the euphoria the black community felt when Willie Herenton became the city’s first African-American mayor. Since then, we’ve had 23 consecutive years of an African American as the chief executive at City Hall, many black majorities on the council, numerous black police and fire directors, and 24 straight years of black school superintendents. Some accomplishments have been registered: tearing down aged blighted apartment complexes to restore hope where none had existed before. We got a new sports arena and a pro basketball team. Beale Street has become a world-wide tourist attraction, and the long-awaited Beale Street Landing riverfront project is finished, even if it was millions over budget.

But honestly, look in the mirror, black and white Memphians, and ask the same pertinent question that catapulted Ronald Reagan to the presidency: “Are you and your family any better off than you were four years ago … or 10 or 20 or 30 years ago?” Statistics, including 28 percent of Memphians black and white living below the national poverty level and consistently worse than the national average unemployment numbers, say a frightening number of Memphians are worse off. Our educational system is not a model for the nation. It’s a liability for those who might consider moving here. It’s no secret we’re losing population every year, unless we want to start annexing the fish in the Mississippi River.

Is it possible that in the Bluff City’s case, the 1964 Civil Rights Act hurt us as a race of people more than it helped us? After decades of blaming the white man for the ills of society, we African Americans were given the chance to govern not only ourselves, but everyone in Memphis and Shelby County. What have we gotten in return for our empowerment? We’ve given our officials the keys to our government and too many of them have interpreted it as a sense of entitlement. They sneer when asked simple questions about their residency. Constituent service has taken a backseat to grandstanding at public forums. We have endured too many banner headlines exposing their personal problems.

The Civil Rights Act was also supposed to make it possible, by ending segregation in schools, for our children to become a part of mainstream America. Unfortunately, in doing so, it sacrificed the pride and diligence of many black teachers who had dedicated their lives and love to making a difference in the classroom. It broke up communities where people once took it upon themselves to be their brother’s keeper and his family as well.

People such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ben Hooks, Maxine Smith, and many others in this city sacrificed much of their lives to see the day when the fight for equal rights would end in triumph. Now that fight needs to be changed and waged to use the power of the vote to find the right people to serve us — not be served — whether black or white.

By the way, councilman, I know where you live, too.

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Cover Feature News

Party like it’s 1989

CREDIT: Arenaphotouk | Dreamstime.com

The year 1989 saw incredible change. Revolution swept the Eastern bloc nations culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall, collapse of the Soviet Union, and end of the Cold War. In China, protests in Tiananmen Square ended in tragedy. On the technology front, personal computers were getting smaller and smarter, and the first internet service providers launched in Australia, setting the stage for the modern internet.

In the Bluff City things were changing, too. “The Big Dig” was the city’s defining public spectacle, in which a giant illuminated shovel was dropped from a helicopter, piercing the earth on the north side of downtown, where “The Great American Pyramid” would soon be erected, charged with all the occult power of Isaac Tigrett’s crystal skull, soon abandoned, and ultimately designated as the future site of the world’s pointiest sporting goods store. A massive  fireworks display was set to the music of Elvis Presley, Al Green, B.B. King, and Otis Redding, climaxing with David Porter’s 10-minute, synth-funk-meets-New-Age oddity, “Power of the Pyramid,” which you’ve never heard of — for a reason.

Meanwhile, on the south side of town (I’d say the other end of the trolley line, but there was no trolley line), MM Corporation, then the parent company of Memphis magazine, launched a cheeky urban tabloid called the Memphis Flyer, to considerably less fanfare.

What was Memphis like in 1989, as described in the pages of a young Memphis Flyer? It was a city filled with fear, corruption, pollution, urban blight, and plenty of school system controversies. It was also a city full of artists, entrepreneurs, oddballs, and all kinds of music. And best of all, according to advertisements featuring a rainbow-striped superhero, for only seven yankee dollars Memphis Cablevision would “fully cablize” your home, including your choice of “high tech home improvements” like HBO or the installation of cable converters for non-cable-ready TVs.

Hustle & Flow director Craig Brewer was 18 years old and living in California in 1989, but the foundation of Memphis’ modern film community was already being laid. A list of Memphians to watch, compiled for a pre-launch sample issue of the Flyer, encouraged readers to “thank Linn Sitler the next time you bump into Dennis Quaid at the Cupboard.” The actor was in town with Winona Ryder filming the Jerry Lee Lewis biopic, Great Balls of Fire. Sitler, who’d been tapped to head the Memphis Film and Tape (now Film and Television) Commission in 1987, had been instrumental in bringing Great Balls to town. She was also praised for her lesser-known work with a Japanese-produced independent film identified in the Flyer‘s preview issue as Tuesday Night in Memphis. It was a languid, lovingly-shot ghost story shot in Memphis’ empty and dilapidated South Main district. It was released to critical acclaim in the summer of ’89 under the new title, Mystery Train.  

The sample issue’s list of up-and-coming Memphians also included grammy-winning sax player Kirk Whalum who went on to become the President and CEO of the Soulsville Foundation in 2010, as well as Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway, a 6′ 6″ junior at Treadwell High School who was averaging 34.5 points a game.

Although the initial “who’s who” column may have missed a few of Memphis’ future notables, many could be found lurking elsewhere within the early Flyer‘s 20-odd pages, sometimes behind bylines. Robert Gordon, documentarian and author of It Came From Memphis, and Respect Yourself, the story of Stax Records, penned a misty cover-length goodbye to jazzman Phineas Newborn Jr. The paper’s first official issue also included a column by humorist Lydel Sims that was topped by a striking caricature of Memphis Mayor Dick Hackett depicted as a bespectacled,  Nixon-nosed Egyptian pharaoh. The artwork was created by Frayser-raised actor Chris Ellis, notable for appearing in films like My Cousin Vinnie, Apollo 13, and The Dark Knight Rises.

That was also the year Memphis City Councilman Rickey Peete went to jail for the first time, and the Flyer asked if it was really the councilman’s fault that “he was out of the room when all the other politicos were learning to play the game?”

Although its focus was Memphis, the Flyer also localized national issues and stories that would define the coming decades. The Christian Right and the hyper-conservative forces that would eventually become the Tea Party were in their ascendancy; ongoing national political dialogue was captured in a pull quote from Jackson Baker’s profile of Memphian Ed McAteer, who founded the Religious Roundtable, a conservative Christian group that did much to secure the Christian right’s influence on American politics. “Liberalism in a politician,” McAteer said, “must be the consequence of either ignorance or deceit.”

If Flyer readers weren’t surprised by 2008’s “too big to fail” economic meltdown, it may be because of reporters like the Flyer‘s Penni Crabtree, who penned this prescient line in 1989: “Banks aren’t going out of business because they give loans to low-income folks — it’s because they are doing speculative real estate deals with their buddies. … Now we as taxpayers will have to bail the bastards out to the tune of $100-billion.”

Future Flyer editor Dennis Freeland was primarily a sportswriter in 1989, but he was also concerned with urban decay. While other reporters focused on the new Pyramid and the proposed Peabody Place development, Freeland turned his attention to Sears Crosstown, a “monumental” building and neighborhood lynchpin that was listed for sale for a mere $10,000. A quarter-century later, Sears Crosstown is being redeveloped, as if in accordance with Freeland’s vision.

The Dixon Gallery & Gardens opened an eye-popping exhibit featuring the lithography of French innovator Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in 1989, but the more interesting homegrown action was happening in the weedy, rusty ruins of South Main, where the Center for Contemporary Art (now defunct), and the original TheatreWorks, an experimental venue for performing artists (now in Overton Square), were establishing the area as a viable arts district. The trolley line wasn’t proposed until 1990, and the fate of the area’s “Lorraine Civil Rights Museum,” was still in question. But something was clearly happening in the crumbling, artist-friendly ruins around the corner from the Flyer‘s Tennessee Street offices.

The Flyer‘s first food writers raved about the smoked salmon pizza with dill and razorback caviar being served at Hemming’s in Saddle Creek Mall and saw a lot of potential in Harry’s on Teur, a tiny Midtown dive with big flavor. They were less impressed by the Russian-inspired finger food at the Handy-Stop Deli and the side dishes at the Western Steakhouse, which was decorated with murals by Memphis wrestler Jerry Lawler.

 In music, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns were still bringing the psychobilly punks out to the Antenna Club, the famed alt-rock bar that, at the dawn of the 1990’s, seemed to present as many Widespread Panic-like jam bands as it did hardcore acts. Falco’s outspoken drummer Ross Johnson underscored the city’s musical diversity by writing an early Flyer feature titled “Saturday Night in Frayser,” about the Lucy Opry, a long-running country and bluegrass venue.

What did Memphis sound like at the dawn of the “Alternative” era? The college rock influence of bands like REM and Echo & the Bunnymen were carried on locally by the ubiquitous 5 That Killed Elvis. Dave Shouse of The Grifters, Easley/McCain studio engineer Davis McCain, and NTJ/Afghan Whigs drummer Paul Buchignani were playing Midtown clubs in a transitional art-pop band called Think as Incas. Shangri-La, the record store/indie label that employed Goner Records founder Eric “Oblivian” Friedl, while releasing singles and CDs by local artists like The Grifters and Man With Gun Lives Here, was one year old.

The biggest Memphis Flyer story of 1989 had to have been Leonard Gill’s “Read ‘Em and Wipe,” a cover story that collected Memphis’ best bathroom stall graffiti, including this probing question from the men’s room of the P&H Cafe: “A generation stoned. Who will do the cooking?” I am happy to report that 25 years later, the author of this brilliant line was a newly-minted Rhodes College graduate named Chris Davis who, having majored in theater and media arts, was stoned, hungry, and wondering what on earth he might do with such a silly degree.

It would be eight more years before I’d get an official Flyer byline, reviewing the Broadway production Phantom of the Opera, prior to the tour’s first visit to the Orpheum in Memphis.

You’ve got to start somewhere, am I right?