Tag: Willie Herenton

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25 Who Shaped Memphis: 1989-2014

Picking 25 people who had a major impact on the life and times of Memphis over the past 25 years is easy. In fact, you can easily pick 50. Narrowing the list down to 25 is the hard part. We made our final choices keeping in mind several areas of influence: politics, government, entertainment, sports, etc. We tried to pick folks whose contributions have stood the test of time or were responsible for a major shifts in attitude or direction.

It is by no means a perfect list, as these things are by necessity subjective. But it’s our list — and it’s a good one. — BV

Laura Adams

Laura Adams

Adams lives and breathes Shelby Farms Park. She was appointed as the conservancy head in 2010, but long before that, Adams advocated for increased use of the city’s largest urban park through Friends of Shelby Farms Park. Since she’s been in the lead role of the nonprofit conservancy, Adams has overseen the addition of the seven-mile Shelby Farms Greenline, a new foot bridge over the Wolf River, the state-of-the-art Woodland Discovery Playground, and new festivals and attractions, and soon, work will begin on expanding Patriot Lake.

Craig Brewer

Over the past 25 years, Hollywood has come to Memphis to shoot several high-profile movies, including The Firm, 21 Grams, and Walk the Line. But there’s only one local filmmaker who took Memphis to Hollywood: Craig Brewer.

On the strength of his first film, 2000’s The Poor & Hungry, Brewer got Hollywood backing for the movie that put Memphis Indie filmmaking on the map: 2005’s Hustle & Flow. The flick won Sundance, got a major theatrical release, and was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning one for “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” by Three 6 Mafia and Frayser Boy.

Brewer followed it up with another Memphis-made film, Black Snake Moan, and then his biggest yet, a remake of Footloose. Nowadays, Brewer divides his time between Memphis and L.A., but make no mistake: There is no bigger or more powerful advocate for the Bluff City film community.

John Calipari

John Calipari

Let’s get one thing straight: Before John Calipari, there was great Memphis Tigers basketball. He did not make the program — but he did make it relevant again when college basketball was no longer essential for players to make it in the NBA. Calipari arrived in Memphis in 2000, licking his wounds after a failed stint in the professional league. He was greeted by some here as a savior (U of M basketball was on the ropes following the Tic Price scandal) and by some as a slick operator (Calipari’s previous college employer, UMass, had to vacate a Final Four because of NCAA violations while he was in charge). But when Calipari’s teams began winning big here, the coach went from someone Memphians hated to love to someone we loved to love. And, when he left for a job at the University of Kentucky — taking some big-time recruits with him — he turned instant villain, someone we loved to hate. Even now, five years after he’s gone, not many a day goes by where his name isn’t uttered on local sports talk.

Karen Carrier

Karen Carrier

Anybody with taste buds in this town should be grateful that Karen Carrier is the restless type. In 1991, she opened Automatic Slim’s Tonga Club on Second Street across from the Peabody. When not a lot was happening in that area, this restaurant’s cool décor and innovative fare inspired by “sun-drenched” locales offered a chic downtown oasis. In 1996, Carrier proved pioneer again when she converted her own home in Victorian Village to pretty, white-tableclothed Cielo. Later, she dumped that concept and made the space into the fashionable Mollie Fontaine Lounge, and then there’s the Beauty Shop, Do, and Bar DKDC. Basically, Carrier is the pied piper of happening restaurants and one of Memphis’ true culinary pioneers.

Steve Cohen

Steve Cohen

The congressman from Memphis’ 9th Congressional District since his first election in 2006, Cohen is still goin,’ running for a fifth term in 2014. Though his first win was via a plurality against a dozen-plus opponents in the predominantly African-American district, Cohen has since won one-on-one contests against name primary challengers with margins ranging from 4-to-1 to 8-to-1.

Cohen’s political durability, first evinced during a 26-year run as a Tennessee state senator, owes much to hard work and tenacity, both in office and on the campaign trail. His most important legacy as a state legislator was his sponsorship of a state lottery and the Hope Scholarship program, which it funds. He’s a vigorous supporter of women’s rights and programs benefiting health care and the arts. Among his contributions in Congress, where he serves on the House Judiciary Committee, are his successful sponsorship of a resolution formally apologizing for the country’s history of slavery.

Margaret Craddock

Margaret Craddock

When Margaret Craddock took the helm of the Metropolitan Inner-Faith Association (MIFA), she not only held the organization on course but also led it into new waters.

Craddock began working at MIFA part-time in 1982 and then full-time in 1988. Spurred by her experiences there, she earned degrees in urban anthropology and law from the University of Memphis. Craddock was entrenched at MIFA and continued to rise to prominence there. 

As associate director, she was instrumental in developing one of MIFA’s most noted programs. The agency decided to build five three-bedroom homes for emergency housing in 1989. Now, that program, implemented in MIFA’s Estival Place communities — gives homeless families a place to live for two years while they take life-skills classes. 

In 1997, Craddock became the first woman to hold MIFA’s top job. At one time, she oversaw an $11 million budget, 160 employees, and more than 4,000 volunteers, and she actively worked to forge outside community partnerships.

Craddock focused MIFA’s mission, built on the agency’s inner-faith heritage by including more clergy on its board of directors, developed more community partners, and improved and modernized MIFA’s inner workings. Craddock retired in 2011.

DJ Paul & Juicy J

DJ Paul and Juicy J

DJ Paul and Juicy J collectively helped globalize the Memphis rap scene when they formed the label Hypnotize Minds in the early 1990s. Under the duo’s leadership, local acts, including Three 6 Mafia, Project Pat, and a magnitude of other artists were introduced to the world. Several Gold and Platinum records have been won by the label, and the first Memphis-based rap movie, Choices, was filmed under their auspices.

In 2006, they became the first hip-hop artists to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” and were showcased on the MTV reality sitcom “Adventures In Hollyhood.”

Although they’ve taken a hiatus as a collective, both artists continue to prosper. Juicy J is enjoying the spoils of a fruitful solo career while DJ Paul has reestablished Three 6 Mafia as Da Mafia 6ix.

John Elkington

John Elkington

To understand the impact John Elkington has had on downtown Memphis, consider Beale Street before he began to manage it in 1983: blocks of abandoned and boarded-up buildings, trash littering otherwise empty streets.

As the developer and manager of modern Beale Street, Elkington transformed it into Memphis’ premier entertainment district and one of the top tourist destinations in the U.S.

The relationship between Elkington and city government ended in 2010. Following the announcement, Memphis mayor A C Wharton said, “Pioneers always get bloodied. [Elkington] went in when others did not go in, and this community owes him a debt of gratitude.” 

Despite the public break-up, Elkington will leave one very important fingerprint on the future of the street he helped create. A 2011 study of Beale Street said thanks to Elkington “the district’s uniqueness and special personality have been largely protected and maintained.”

Harold Ford Sr. / Harold Ford Jr.

Harold Ford Sr. /Harold Ford Jr.

This father/son combination held the Memphis congressional district (first designated Tennessee’s 8th, later the 9th) from 1974 until 2006, beginning when Democrat Ford Sr., then a state representative, won in an upset over the Republican incumbent, becoming the state’s first elected black Congress member.

A member of an upwardly mobile black family invested in the funeral home business, Harold Ford Sr. became the patriarch of an extended-family political dynasty, which has consistently held positions in state and local government ever since. Wielder of the “Ford ballot,” an endorsement list of candidates in each successive election, Ford Sr. became influential in Congress as well but was ensnared in a Reagan-era Department of Justice prosecution for alleged bank fraud that, after one mistrial, would end with Ford’s exoneration in a 1993 retrial.

In 1996, the senior Ford stepped aside, backing his son Harold Ford Jr., who won election that year and four more times. Uninterested in the kind of local political organization overseen by his father, and more conservative politically, Ford Jr. directed his ambitions toward national power instead and was widely considered a prospect to become the nation’s first African-American major-party nominee for president. Beaten to the U.S. Senate by Illinois’ Barack Obama in 2004, Democrat Ford made his own try for the Senate in 2006, narrowly losing to Republican Bob Corker. He subsequently married and moved to New York, where he works on Wall Street. He is still considered to be a political prospect, with a rumored Senate run in the Empire State.

Larry Godwin

Larry Godwin

The former Memphis Police Department (MPD) chief spent 37 years tenured with the MPD. Beginning as an undercover narcotics officer in 1973, Godwin later was a homicide investigator and commander of the crime response/bomb unit before being named police director in 2004.

Godwin helped restructure the department’s method of operation, adding new crime prevention programs, such as Blue CRUSH; established a $3.5 million technology hub, Real Time Crime Center; and increased the number of police on the streets. Under his leadership, the percentage of violent crimes dropped significantly, and numerous undercover investigations targeting narcotics sales were successfully executed.

Following his retirement in 2011, Godwin became the deputy commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

Pat Halloran

Pat Halloran

Halloran moved to the city in 1969 and was elected to the Memphis City Council within five years. With the Memphis Development Foundation (MDF), he saved the Orpheum from the wrecking ball. The theater reopened in 1984 and has set records for booking touring Broadway shows. Halloran has earned three Tony Awards, notably for the musical Memphis. In March 2014, the MDF began construction on the The Orpheum Centre for Performing Arts & Education, a 40,000-square-foot facility featuring theater space, classrooms, an audio-visuals arts lab, and event rental space. Without Halloran’s ongoing vision for the Orpheum through the years, Memphis would be an infinitely less interesting city.

Michael Heisley

Michael Heisley

For decades, Memphis had pursued an NFL team, but the city’s hopes were dashed in 1993, when the league opted against awarding Memphis a team. The NFL settled in Nashville, leaving a bitter taste in Memphians’ mouths. It seemed a pro sports team would never move here. That changed in 2001, when Michael Heisley, billionaire owner of the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies, decided to relocate his team to Memphis. It was a shocking move at the time and is still shocking in retrospect. Local power players were crucial in making the city attractive to Heisley, securing financing for FedExForum, but it was Heisley’s call. His decision radically affected downtown Memphis, the entertainment industry, sports business, sports talk, and even the city’s psyche.

The outspoken owner had his ups and downs in the public eye over the years, but he did right by Memphis. He eventually sold the team in 2012 and passed away earlier this year. Never forget: Before there was grit and grind, there was Michael Heisley.

Willie Herenton

Willie Herenton

Herenton was born to a single mother on Memphis’ south side. She lived to see her son become the city’s first African-American school superintendent and later witnessed his five separate inaugurations as Memphis’ mayor, after becoming the first black person ever elected to that position, in 1991.

A Booker T. Washington High School graduate, Herenton was an amateur boxing champion as a youth. Pursuing education as a career, he earned a Ph.D. and worked his way up rapidly in the Memphis City Schools system, becoming its superintendent in 1978. An educational innovator with magnet schools and other new options, he resigned reluctantly in the wake of negative publicity about a sexual liaison with a teacher and a modest administrative scandal.

He landed on his feet, becoming almost instantly a consensus black candidate for mayor in 1991. Considered a strong chief executive, he eventually lost interest in the job and resigned in 2009. He made an unsuccessful challenge to incumbent 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen in 2010 and has spent the time since attempting to develop a chain of local charter schools. He now runs a charter school program.

Benjamin L. Hooks

Rev. Benjamin L. Hooks

A native Memphian, Hooks was largely known as a seminal civil rights activist. A Baptist minister and attorney, he was the first African-American Criminal Court judge in the South since the Reconstruction Era, and the first African-American appointee for the Federal Communications Commission.

During the civil rights movement, Hooks helped orchestrate protests and sit-ins, and promoted the importance of education. He led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for 15 years.

Hooks was a strong advocate for racial, social, and economic justice. The civil rights icon died in 2010, but his legacy lives on through the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, and the Benjamin L. Hooks Job Corps Center.

Carissa Hussong

Carissa Hussong

That cool Greely Myatt piece you have on your wall, the one that looks like nails…that is art with a capital “A.” It does not match your couch. Other than family and friends, about half-a-million Memphians will never see that piece. But all of us can check out Myatt’s Quiltsurround, a metalwork quilt used to cover up City Hall’s air units. That work and nearly every piece of Memphis’ public art created in the past 17 years — from the murals in Soulsville and Binghampton to the menagerie of art at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library — traces its lineage to the UrbanArt Commission and its founding executive director, Carissa Hussong.

Hussong left the commission to become the executive director of the Metal Museum in 2008. Under her lead, the museum has introduced its “Tributaries” series, featuring the work of emerging metal artists.

J.R. “Pitt” Hyde

Hyde grew up watching his grandfather and father turn Malone & Hyde into one of the country’s largest food wholesalers.

“They took risks that many people considered unwise — and succeeded, despite the odds,” Hyde says. “I believe my exposure to this type of ‘pioneering’ mindset gave me the drive to try new, unproven ventures.”

Those ventures include being the founder of auto parts giant AutoZone, chair of biopharmaceutical startup GTx Inc., co-founder of the private equity firm MB Ventures, the impetus (along with his wife, Barbara) behind the $69 million Hyde Family Foundation, and scion of several other highly placed and deep-pocketed endeavors rooted in Memphis — most notably the National Civil Rights Museum and Ballet Memphis.

Hyde was instrumental in the founding of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation, Memphis Tomorrow, and the National Civil Rights Museum. He is a minority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies and helped bring the NBA team to Memphis.

Robert Lipscomb

Robert Lipscomb

For years, Lipscomb has been significantly involved in the restructuring of public housing in Memphis, as well as the redevelopment of its downtown and inner city communities. In 2009, he was appointed executive director of the Memphis Housing Authority and director of the city’s Division of Housing and Community Development.

Motivated by the desire to improve the city’s underprivileged living conditions, Lipscomb developed Memphis’ first strategic housing plan. Under his guidance, numerous run-down and crime-plagued housing projects have been replaced with modern developments.

Lipscomb is spearheading the $190 million project to redevelop The Pyramid into a Bass Pro Shops retail center. He’s also involved in the planned redevelopment of the Mid-South Fairgrounds.

A native Memphian, Lipscomb created the Down Payment Assistance Program, the Housing Trust Fund, the Housing Resource Center, and other housing initiatives.

Jackie Nichols

Jackie Nichols

Playhouse on the Square’s founding executive producer doesn’t just make theater. He makes community. And he makes sense. Loeb Properties may have ponied up the money to bring back Overton Square, but it was Jackie Nichols who literally set the stage for the area’s incredible turnaround. Nichols was still a teenage tap dancer when he realized that Memphis needed producers more than it needed performers.

In 1969, he launched Circuit Players. In 1975 he expanded, opening Playhouse on the Square on Madison Avenue. In 2010, Nichols, also instrumental in the founding of TheatreWorks, moved his operations from the old Memphian Theatre into a $12.5 million, custom-built performing arts facility at Cooper and Union. When Overton Square developer Robert Loeb asked Nichols what it would take to make Overton Square work as a theater district, Nichols answered, “More theaters,” paving the way for Ekundayo Bandele’s Hattiloo, which opens to the public in July.

The new Playhouse on the Square has allowed for collaborations with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and created a Midtown home for arts institutions like Ballet Memphis and Opera Memphis. But Nichols’ legacy is best represented by Memphis’ thriving independent theater scene, made possible by the space, equipment, and support he’s created. His greatest contribution to the city may be in showing us that the arts really can be a sound investment.

David Pickler

David Pickler

Once considered the “president-for-life” of the old county-only Shelby County Schools (SCS) board, to which he was first elected in 1998 and led until that version of the board ceased to be with the SCS-Memphis City Schools (MCS) merger of 2011-13, Pickler continued to represent Germantown/Collierville on the first post-merger SCS board, pending the creation of new suburban school districts.

Many blame the surrender of the MCS charter and subsequent forced merger on Pickler’s decades-long vow to seek special-school-district status for the original SCS system, which was publicly renewed when a Republican majority — presumed to be suburb-friendly — took over the legislature in 2010. Pickler contends that then-MCS Board Chairman Martavius Jones, a prime mover in the charter surrender, already harbored merger plans.

In any case, Pickler, a lawyer who also operates Pickler Wealth Advisers, an investment/estate-management firm, continues his involvement with education matters as president of the National School Boards Association and is thought to harbor political ambitions.

Beverly Robertson

Beverly Robertson

Robertson has headed up the Civil Rights Museum since 1997, but perhaps her greatest achievement has been overseeing the museum’s recent $27.5 million renovation. The old Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in 1968, and the adjoining building have been remodeled with interactive touch-screen exhibits, a slave ship where visitors can crawl into the tiny space where slaves were held, and the recreated courtroom from Brown vs. Board of Education. Since Robertson took the helm, the museum has been identified as one of the nation’s top 10 attractions by National Geographic’s Young Explorers and as a “national treasure” by USA Today. Though she’s led the museum for 16 of its 22 years, Robertson has announced that she will retire next month.

Gayle Rose

Gayle S. Rose

We’ll bet that no other University of Northern Iowa (UNI) music student has ever been named by Business Tennessee magazine as one of our state’s “100 Most Powerful People.” But then, Gayle Rose isn’t like most people. After earning degrees in music and business from UNI, the accomplished clarinetist graduated from Harvard with a master’s in public administration. Rose spearheaded self-help guru Deepak Chopra’s international publishing and TV ventures.

She co-founded 10,000 Women for Herenton (later 10,000 Women for Change), co-founded the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis, founded the Rose Family Foundation, and earned the national “Changing the Face of Philanthropy Award.” She also formed Max’s Team, a volunteer organization that honors the memory of her late son.

Rose is the principal owner and CEO of Electronic Vaulting Services (EVS) Corporation, a data protection company, headquartered in Memphis. Prior to joining EVS, Rose served as managing director of Heritage Capital Advisors, LLC, a private equity, corporate advisory, and asset firm with offices in Atlanta and Memphis.

Rose is perhaps best-known for leading the NBA “Pursuit Team,” which eventually attracted the Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis in 2000.

Maxine Smith

Maxine Smith

In 1957, Memphis State University refused to admit Maxine Smith because she was black, and that inspired her to take on the South’s racist attitudes and fight for civil rights. Smith headed up the local NAACP and became one of few women leaders in the male-dominated local civil rights movement. She and her husband, Vasco Smith, protested segregation at the Memphis Zoo and the Memphis Public Library, and she fought to reorganize the city school board to allow black candidates a chance at winning city elections. Smith was elected to one of those school board seats in 1971, and afterward, she became a huge proponent for court-ordered busing, which she saw as a way to overcome city leaders’ attempts at only integrating a few schools for show. Smith sat on the board of the National Civil Rights Museum and received the museum’s National Freedom Award, along with former President Bill Clinton, in 2003.

Pat Kerr Tigrett

Pat Kerr Tigrett

This Memphis-based fashion designer got her start designing Vogue-worthy gowns for her paper dolls when she was just a kid living in Savannah, Tennessee. She later moved to Memphis for college, won Miss Tennessee Universe, and then bought the Tennessee Miss Universe franchise.

As a beauty queen, Kerr Tigrett got a taste of philanthropy with fashion charity shows. She went on to launch the Memphis Charitable Foundation, host of the annual Blues Ball, which, since 1994, has raised loads of money for Porter-Leath Children’s Center, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center, Madonna Learning Center, and other local nonprofits. Kerr Tigrett is the widow of entrepreneur John Tigrett.

Henry Turley

Henry Turley

Some developers leave behind a footprint on their community. Behind Henry Turley will be an entire Memphis landscape. Turley’s brilliance was in recognizing — and acting upon — what now seems obvious: The most valuable real estate in the world is next to water. With downtown Memphis perched alongside the mightiest stream in North America, a breathtaking neighborhood (or more) awaited birth.

With Jack Belz, Turley, developed the upscale Harbor Town residential and commercial center on Mud Island, the low-income and middle-income Uptown residential development north of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and South Bluffs, where he lives.

Stroll through Harbor Town or South Bluffs today, and you’d think the mighty homes and river views have been there a century when, in fact, most are barely 20 years old, the realization of Turley’s vision for making downtown more than a business center.

Turley is a board member of Contemporary Media, the parent company of Memphis magazine and the Memphis Flyer. A native of Memphis and graduate of the University of Tennessee, Turley is known for his plainspoken good humor, creativity, and unfailing belief in downtown and the restoration of public spaces in older neighborhoods.

AC Wharton

A C Wharton

A native of Middle Tennessee who grew up on country music and both graduated from and taught at the Ole Miss Law School, Wharton is the epitome of crossover and conciliation, and either of those “c” words could be his non-existent middle name. (“A” doesn’t stand for a name either.)

Wharton’s major contribution was to restore calm and a sense of unified purpose to the city after the contentious last years of his mayoral predecessor Willie Herenton’s lengthy tenure. Hard-working, eloquent, and good-natured, Wharton was Shelby County’s Public Defender for many years, then easily won two four-year terms as county mayor before winning a special election to succeed Herenton, who had resigned, in 2009. Reelected in 2011, he has had to grapple with dwindling revenue, a never-ending budget crisis, and attendant crises in public services.

Sherman Willmott

Sherman Willmott

The irascible Willmott has worked like a Tahiti-shirted puppet-master, shaping a lot of cool and important Memphis stuff over the past 25 years. In 1988, he and Eric Freidl opened Shangri-La Records on Madison Avenue, which became a center for the burgeoning alt-music scene. Soon they were mixed up in independent record distribution and releasing records by the Grifters that earned national accolades and a big record deal. Willmott kept the Stax flame lit during the dark ages and was instrumental in curating the Stax Museum. His work with master archivist Ron Hall formed the basis for the acclaimed wrestling movie, Memphis Heat, which is a great film and a better document of how hilariously weird Memphis really is.

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News The Fly-By

A Little Table Talk

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Though it somehow seems longer, it has only been five years — actually a little less — since I sat down for an interview with Willie Herenton, who was about to take voluntary leave of the job of mayor of Memphis after holding it for more than 17 years.

Herenton had requested the interview and clearly had some things to get off his chest. It was the Flyer issue of July 2, 2009, and we called the result, appropriately enough, “The Exit Interview.”

One of the several hot-button things the outgoing mayor wanted to talk about was his relationship with the man considered by Herenton and most other political observers — correctly, as it turned out — to be the likely winner of the right to succeed him in the special mayoral election that would follow that year. This was A C Wharton, the amiable former public defender who was in the latter half of his second four-year term as Shelby County mayor.

Only two years before, in the run-up to the regular 2007 city election, Wharton had been actively recruited by an ad hoc citizens’ group to run against Herenton, who was about to seek a fifth consecutive term, further expanding on what was already a record length of mayoral tenure.

Wharton was clearly tempted, and in the midst of rampant public speculation as to his intentions, the two chief executives met for a well-publicized but confidential conversation at Overton Square’s Le Chardonnay restaurant, after which the county mayor announced he would not be seeking the city job. Not just yet.

Only in the Flyer’s “Exit Interview” was the substance of that conversation finally revealed. From the interview:

“‘We didn’t have dinner.’ That was the first revelation about what the mayor described as a ‘cleansing conversation between A C Wharton and Willie Herenton.’ But more were to come. ‘A C and I did not make a deal,’ Herenton insisted. ‘People who know me know I’m not a dealmaker. … We were both honest and candid with each other about some issues surrounding his flirtation with running for city mayor.

“‘I gave him my straight, pretty hard feelings about that. I had deep resentment for that. I felt he should not have flirted with that. It was a character flaw. I resented it. I felt he should not have entertained it for a moment.’ Herenton said he thought Wharton, by considering the issue of running, had yielded to ‘divide-and-conquer’ forces in the community.

“The county mayor, too, had vented some complaints at Le Chardonnay, Herenton said: ‘He felt my style was divisive, while his was unifying. He thought I should tone down my leadership role. He felt I should avoid a lot of the skirmishes I got involved in and stick to issues. He did not care for my temperament in the office and my style.’ Herenton smiled thinly as he recalled what his response to his mayoral counterpart had been. ‘My style is me.'”

And if Wharton had entered the mayor’s race against Herenton in 2007? The article continued:

“Another thin smile. ‘We would have beat him. It would not have been nice. We would have won, but it would have been ugly. It would have been real ugly.’ Why? ‘Because I would have described him. I don’t have to describe him now.'”

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Richard Fields, a Socratic Gadfly, Gone Too Soon

Richard Fields in 2001

  • Richard Fields in 2001

I was stunned and saddened to learn on Saturday night of the death of Richard Fields, a pedigreed civil rights attorney who had toiled relentlessly for many years to bring the two major races of these parts into some kind of parity to make up for eons of official and unofficial injustice perpetrated by one upon the other.

My grief, if that’s the right word for it, was not because I ever considered myself a friend of Fields. I knew him first by reputation and then as a news figure and sometime source whose work affected my main beat, politics, and then as an acquaintance I would sometimes run into at gatherings and public events. My colleague John Branston, who has written splendidly and comprehensively about Fields, knew him far better. (See his 2001 Flyer article, “The Man Behind the News.”)

The fact is, I was one of an increasing number of people locally who could respect, even admire much of what Fields had done but — to say it outright, if mutedly — were taken aback and estranged by what he seemed to have become or, even if involuntarily, were forced into a clash with him.

Let’s just say he had issues, dormant during his legal heyday, that loomed larger in his personality in recent years. Some of them stemmed from his apparent decision — at some point in the late ‘90s — that he was meant to be a kingmaker, influencing elections and political outcomes instead of, or side by side with, correcting injustices.

The ancient Greeks coined a term for this kind of presumption, and the errors and imbalances of self and temptings of fate it entailed: hubris.

This is not the venue to list what might have been Fields’ derelictions, many of which he answered to in the form of ignominious defeats in two bumbling runs for public office (School Board and state Senate), in a state Supreme Court censure here or disciplinary bar actions there, or in or two separate expulsions from the local Democratic executive committee.

(At least one of the latter was attributed by supporters to an act of principle: i.e.,his legal work, alongside Republicans, against seating a Democratic legislator, state Senator Ophelia Ford, amid evidence of fraud in her election.)

He also strained and even ruptured friendships, some of which had been monumentally important to him — like that with former Mayor Willie Herenton, whose rise to power he had been instrumental in, even if not to the degree that he liked to suppose.

In the course of trying to influence Herenton against running for a fifth term and to broker a succession, this meticulous and unabashedly judgmental lawyer was accused of having slipped over to the wrong side of the law himself in an entrapment scheme, a circumstance he would strongly deny and, in any case, was never tried for.

Fields saw himself, not always accurately, as being on the side of the angels. He certainly had more than his share of courage, and in basic, institutional ways he could see clearly the difference between right and wrong and try to get others to see it — nay, make them see it by force of law. If he had trouble coming to the same distinction about his own conduct, he most surely was not the only human being so afflicted.

I own up to having written some articles about Fields in recent years that, let us say, tried to redress the over-glowing image he had of himself. And I remember being approached by one of his closest legal and personal friends and tensing up, thinking I was about to be reproached. “Thank you,” the man said instead, and it was then that I realized that some of those who regarded Richard Fields most fondly were concerned that, for his own sake, he be redirected back to his center — by public writ or therapeutic means, if need be.

Let us revisit that center: Richard Fields, who came here from California in the late ‘60s to work on behalf of the ambitious War on Poverty programs of the time, even as those programs were losing steam, stayed around to try to finish on his own the impossible tasks they had envisioned.

After earning a law degree, he set out to be a scourge of established privilege, litigating to desegregate schools, protect the impoverished from exploitative developers or unscrupulous businesses or negligent officialdom , secure better living conditions for working-class folks, and in general to be the kind of public gadfly that an accused Socrates once proudly owned up to being. He was a mainstay of the NAACP when that organization needed someone most.

In the course of it all, he endured, or perhaps even invited, sacrifices in his personal life, as how could it be otherwise?

Let me be clear about something: I don’t rejoice when the Reaper comes calling on anybody, and I particularly lament the way in which Richard Fields met his fate — hit by a car while crossing a busy Midtown thoroughfare at high noon.

At this writing, we still don’t know much about the accident, though both the motorist’s statement on a police report and an interview with a bystander featured on local television suggest that Fields may have walked directly into the stream of traffic, oblivious to danger.

Whether or not it’s accurate, I see him doing so with a cell phone attached to his ear, working an angle, still on the case at age 65, still trying to right some wrong, real or imagined, and not noticing, or feeling for very long, what hit him. There are worse ways to go, but, still, it’s a shame.

Categories
Opinion

Rick Masson Named Special Master

masson.jpg

Rick Masson, former chief administrative officer for the city of Memphis under Mayor Willie Herenton, has been named special master by federal judge Samuel H. Mays to oversee the merger of the Memphis and Shelby County school systems.

For three terms, Masson was Herenton’s “go-to guy” for major projects as well as the main contact with the Memphis City Council.

“Rick is an extremely capable executive who has had high level managerial experience in city government and on the board of MLGW,” said Herenton. “I have utmost confidence in Rick’s ability to lead this board through this merger.”

Herenton said Masson played a key role in the “complicated outsourcing of our I.T. (information technology) department)” and the establishment of annexation reserve areas with Shelby County municipalities in the 1990s when Jim Rout was county mayor.

“He’s been in complicated situations that will help him complete this merger,” said Herenton, who is hoping to start several charter schools under the new unified school system.

Like Mays, a White Station High School graduate in 1966, Masson has some connections to the MCS optional schools program. His son attended White Station when the Massons lived in the Evergreen neighborhood in Midtown.

Former City Councilman John Vergos, also a 1966 WSHS graduate, was delighted with the selection of Masson.

“He’s the kind of guy who would come into the office and put his feet up on the desk and talk about whatever was troubling you,” he said. “I was on the first council that majority African-American, and Rick had a reputation for being able to work with the administration and council.”

Vergos believes Masson has “a healthy skepticism about school budgeting and I think that is good in this situation.”

Masson’s selection was something of a surprise. Only last week he was announced as the newest “heavy hitter” addition to a local public relations and consulting firm, Caissa.

Mays listed eight duties of the special master.

1) To monitor the work of the Shelby County Board of Education as it makes the decisions necessary to transfer the administration of the Memphis City Schools to the Shelby County Board of Education;

2) To assist the Shelby County Board of Education and its staff in making decisions and in establishing and maintaining deadlines for decisions;

3) To ensure that the issues identified in the Transition Plan approved by the Transition Planning Commission and reviewed by the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education are considered and resolved in a timely and appropriate way;

4) To work with the parties and the Tennessee Department of Education as necessary to provide that the rights of teachers are not impaired, interrupted, or diminished;

5) To work with the Shelby County Board of Education in establishing a practical budget for the combined school systems and with the appropriate parties to the Consent Decree that the budget is adequately funded;

6) To gather such information as may be necessary to implement the Consent Decree and to report to the Court orally or in writing, as may be necessary, considering always that time is of the essence;

7) To promote cooperation among the parties and among the members of the Shelby County Board of Education and to encourage voluntary compliance with the Consent Decree; and

8) To recommend specific action by the Court if decisions are not made or not timely made.

From the order: “The special master may communicate ex parte with the Court, with counsel, with representatives of any party, or with such other individuals as necessary to perform his duties. The Court appoints Rick Masson of Shelby County, Tennessee, as special master. Mr. Masson has experience in municipal administration and finance, the organization and management of nonprofit organizations, and strategic planning for public agencies. He will serve at the pleasure of the Court and be compensated at the rate of $250 an hour, plus expenses, payable monthly. His compensation will be paid one-half by the Memphis City Schools and one-half by the Shelby County Schools, as provided in the Consent Decree. He will assume his duties on the entry of this order. The special master is directed to take all appropriate measures to perform his assigned duties fairly and efficiently.”

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Opinion

Reactions to Cohen’s Revelation Generally Mild

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While the public waits to see if more details of Steve Cohen’s fatherhood come out, reaction so far to the surprise announcement ranges from bored to bemused, more like the frothy musical “Mama Mia” about a bride and three prospective fathers-of-the-bride than the snarky “baby daddy” jabs at professional athletes and other politicians.

Most notably, there is little of the over-the-top outrage that greeted another unmarried man, former mayor Willie Herenton, when he made a surprise announcement of fathering a child in 2005 with an unmarried woman. It is not known yet whether Cohen’s lady friend of 24 years ago, Cynthia White Sinatra, was married or not at the time or who helped raise the child. Ms. Sinatra has apparently been divorced more than once, and she and Cohen were reportedly out of contact for some 20 years.

On Cohen and his daughter Victoria Brink and her mother:

The Memphis Flyer: “There is more to tell about this tale, and we’ll tell it when it becomes possible. Meanwhile, we congratulate the proud papa (who intends to spend some joyous and out-in-the-open time with his daughter), and we say “shame on you” to those who, for political reasons, tried to escalate this story, an inspirational one if it’s anything at all, into a scandal. ….. Could there have been a better Valentine’s Day story than this?”

Wendi Thomas of The Commercial Appeal: “There is but one thing that troubles me about the news that U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a confirmed bachelor, has a 24-year-old daughter. He doesn’t know how to tweet. Cohen, 63, was forced Thursday to tell the world that three years ago, he learned he is a parent — which is really no one’s business — only because he sent a message into the Twitterverse that he intended only for his daughter.”

Cohen spokesman Michael Pagan, the day before the announcement made this statement inoperative: “She is the daughter of a longtime friend and they’re pretty much like family. He’s known her pretty much her whole life. He has a longtime girlfriend in Memphis.”

Van Turner, Chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party, to WMC-TV: “It’s surprising. I think it’s wonderful news, parenthood changes you. I’m here with my daughter, so I think you look at issues a little differently. It really makes you a well rounded elected public servant.”

Compare this to Commercial Appeal investigative reporter Marc Perrusquia’s look-back on Herenton and Claudine Marsh in 2009, the year before Herenton challenged Cohen in a congressional race. In January 2005, when his son Michael was 4 months old, Herenton called a press conference to announce that he had fathered the child, whom he has supported financially.

“Even as years of controversy roiled into a near operatic drama, few of the developments affecting fourth-term Mayor Willie Wilbert Herenton resonated like that of the birth of his son, Michael . . . In the birth of his out-of-wedlock son, Herenton’s critics found a trifecta of flaws: poor judgment, recklessness and a brazen penchant for secrecy.”

Like Cohen, Herenton asked the media and public to respect his privacy.

“I respectfully request that the media respect the privacy of all of the individuals involved. This matter has nothing to do with my public duty as the mayor.”

The CA was having none of it, even in 2009.

“Yet as Herenton tried to douse yet another fire, questions flowed. Could the mayor, with his record for controversy, realistically expect the media to leave this matter alone? Did his private life really not affect his public duties? And what kind of example was he setting for the city’s youth?”

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Opinion

Cash and Herenton Bury the Hatchet

CREDIT: John Branston

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Eight times they met for breakfast in a restaurant in the Westin Hotel downtown, Kriner Cash the superintendent with an uncertain future in a unified school system and Willie Herenton the former superintendent who wanted to hold the job again before Cash got it instead.

The meetings began in February and continued for several weeks. Seven months after they buried the hatchet, Cash and Herenton held a joint press conference Wednesday to announce the former mayor’s participation in a new charter school for juvenile offenders.

It isn’t clear exactly who reached out to whom and how. Cash recalled that he sought out Herenton to fill a niche in the school system well suited to his experience and personal biography as a home-grown Memphian raised by a single mother. Herenton said he reached out to Cash as well as Shelby County Schools Superintendent John Aitken and others to help him get back in the schools game. Whatever, the two men met and apparently the talk was unfiltered.

“Straight talk, real straight talk,” said Herenton, adding that if the meetings had been taped “you would have heard some dynamic interaction.”

“We would tease each other,” said Cash. “I asked him ‘why do you want to take our money?’ ” — a reference to the state funding that follows students who go to charter schools. They ate pancakes, and all of the meetings were one-on-one.

At the news conference, Herenton said the final form of the new school isn’t clear yet but “my personal hand, my professional hand, will be all over this program.”

The announcement and photo op came a day after Cash gave what seemed to be a farewell speech at Memphis Botanic Gardens to 134 Memphis teachers honored by their peers as the best at their individual schools. He said his role now is to ease the transition to the unified school system and the 14 new charter schools that have been approved. He is undergoing a personal transition as well as a widower looking for another job. He expects to be gone by the end of the year and is a finalist for a superintendent job in Florida.

Herenton, on the other hand, has been on the outside looking in since leaving the mayor’s office. His attempt to be named superintendent failed when the school board instead opted to do a national search and ultimately selected Cash, of whom Herenton has occasionally been openly critical. Herenton’s image was tarnished again when he was trounced by Steve Cohen in his bid for Congress. After that he turned his attention to what he has said many times was his first love, education.

I met with Herenton at the Flyer’s office (a change, to be sure) in January when his charter school application was being slow walked in Nashville. He wasn’t ready to go public with his frustration, but he was considering other means of getting a piece of the charter deal if he didn’t make any progress soon. Within weeks, he and Cash started meeting.

And a year from now, Willie Herenton could be a player again in Memphis education while Kriner Cash is somewhere else.

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Opinion

Public School Escape Hatches

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What do a star football player at St. George’s private school, Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald, State Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, and former mayor Willie Herenton have in common?

They’re all threats to the future consolidated Memphis and Shelby County public school system, which is going to be riddled with escape hatches that could potentially draw away tens of thousands of students and the state dollars that go with them.

Omar Williams, pictured in The Commercial Appeal today, is a running back at St. George’s who transferred from Manassas High School. He is one of several black athletes who have gone from Memphis public schools to private schools such as St. George’s, Briarcrest, and MUS. The best known include Elliot Williams, who went to St. George’s before playing basketball at Duke and Memphis, and Michael Oher, who went to Briarcrest before starring at Ole Miss and in the NFL. Competitive private schools welcome such student athletes — and some of their non-jock classmates — for reasons of altruism, diversity, and winning championships. Recruiting is not just for colleges. Look at all the University of Memphis basketball players who went to private academies whose specialty is prepping the cream of the crop for careers at Division 1 powerhouse schools and, perhaps, the NBA. I’m surprised Memphis doesn’t have such an “academy” for jocks right here at home already.

Keith McDonald is the most prominent no-ifs-ands-or-buts-about-it proponent of separate suburban school systems. Bartlett, Germantown, Collierville, and Millington are all studying the prospects. That represents a potential loss of tens of thousands of students to the consolidated Shelby County system two years from now.

Charter schools are a third escape hatch. The joint school board this week denied new applications, but the board and MCS Superintendent Kriner Cash seem to have a different point of view than Education Commissioner Huffman. See Jackson Baker’s blog post here.

Herenton is one of the applicants for multiple charter schools. He told me Friday he has appealed the denial of his application to the state treasurer’s office, which will look at the impact on finances. A decision is expected in a month. If the treasurer rejects the school board’s claim that charters adversely effect budgets, then Herenton will appeal to the education commissioner, who could direct the school board to approve the application.

“The unified board has not adequately read the future of the Memphis and Shelby county public school system,” Herenton said. “They have not accepted that the educational arena is going to change even more dramatically n the future. MCS has been a colossal failure in terms of educating the children in the inner city and in poverty. Parents, students and teachers deserve the opportunity to participate in a variety of programs.”

Herenton is a former MCS superintendent. Asked what he would do today if he was in Kriner Cash’s shoes, he said “if educators and board members are really concerned about improving academics, then they shouldn’t care who is given leadership. They have to put children first, but they have put their own interests first.”

Cash and board members say they are just trying to operate within their budget, and they have to employ roughly the same number of people and cover the same overhead, at least in the short run, despite the influx and outflow of students.

They’re fighting on multiple fronts. It sometimes looks like a rearguard action because charters have by and large avoided close scrutiny and get pretty good press in Memphis and Nashville.

But setting up a new school much less a new system is hard and expensive. Sooner or later, MCS/SCS will have to stop playing defense and go on offense — in other words, make the positive case for a big unified school system with veteran teachers, principals, coaches, marching bands, extracurricular activities, no tuition, proud tradition, bus routes, neighborhood identity, stability, whatever. The appeal will have to be “why you should choose us” not “why you should not be allowed to leave us.”

Once deregulation begins, there is no stopping it. There is a very good chance that the future consolidated system could become the current MCS system, minus hundreds if not thousands of its most athletic, college-bound, and motivated students and parents. That’s the thing about escape hatches.

Categories
Opinion

Leaning “Undecided”

Heading into the backstretch of the School Systems Derby, it’s Undecided pulling even with Pickler Pony and Hart of Jones.

At least that’s how I see it. The more I read and hear, the less I know about this big space-eater of a story. Pollsters like to talk about which way the “undecideds” are leaning. I see “ayes” and “nays” leaning “undecided.”

Three weeks before early voting might begin in a Memphis referendum, Tennessee lieutenant governor Ron “Blountville Knows Best” Ramsey says not so fast. His arrogance could make merger opponents reconsider. Former mayor and superintendent Willie Herenton says it’s about time Memphis came around to an idea he has been pushing in one form or another for 17 years. Perhaps, but his association with it might not help. Memphis City Schools superintendent Kriner Cash says stay the course. Mayor A C Wharton says how about that Electrolux deal?

Have you noticed … how closing half-empty MCS schools went from an idea whose time has come to an idea nobody talks about any more?

Or that merger proponents continue to talk about a Shelby County special school district as if it could be financially independent of Memphis even though that is very unlikely, given that Memphians are a majority on the Shelby County Commission?

Or that 12 public schools in Shelby County are in no-man’s-land, also known as the Memphis annexation area, and nobody knows if or when they will shift from SCS to MCS? If these 12 schools and their 7,656 black students are absorbed by MCS, then SCS will lose 40 percent of its black enrollment.

Or that Cash recently tossed out some numbers from an inner-city school that look as fishy as Derrick Rose’s SAT score?

As for Ramsey and Herenton: Ramsey knows nothing about MCS; Herenton has forgotten more about MCS than most of the rest of us will ever know. At Hollywood Community Center last week, he made a pitch for MCS charter surrender and reminded everyone that in 1993 he suggested that the whole city surrender its charter because, “I did not want my city of Memphis to become another Detroit.” Over the next 15 years, Herenton pitched consolidation in one form or another at least a half-dozen times.

No urgency, no action. Ideals are not the same as outcomes. The most complete analysis of possible outcomes is a 2008 University of Memphis study. There are two big “ifs.” One is how much territory and how many of those 12 schools in Southwind, Cordova, and northwest Shelby County Memphis takes over. The other big “if” is how schools are funded and whose taxes go up and down. State funding is a given. So is county funding, under current law. Special school districts like Memphis and, perhaps, Shelby County can impose an additional property tax.

In the worst case for Memphis and best case for the suburbs, county government would stop using property taxes to fund schools, and each district would fund itself. In that case, the imbalance of Memphis and suburban taxes would get even more out of whack.

Finally, there is the story of the remarkable improvements in achievement scores and the graduation rate at Booker T. Washington High School. Cash said BTW achieved a graduation rate of 82 percent and outperformed Central High School in reading and math and is “within a couple points of White Station High School.”

The inner-city school lost enrollment when the neighboring housing projects were torn down. By 2005, it had fewer than 700 students and a graduation rate of 52 percent. From 2005 to 2009, its graduation rate ranged from 52 percent to 60 percent. But in 2010, the rate soared 22 points. No other city high school has improved so much so fast. Statistical outliers like that are usually due to a change of population. BTW went from 629 students in 2009 to 549 last year. We can assume it wasn’t the top students who left.

On the Tennessee Report Card, BTW does outscore Central in the percentage of students achieving proficiency in math, 52 percent to 46 percent. But Central and White Station, optional schools with more than 1,700 students each, score much higher in every other category. White Station has an average ACT composite score of 23 compared to 14 for BTW.

My point is not to beat up on BTW. Comparing it to an optional school is unfair. My point is that dramatic success stories must be verifiable and replicable. This one isn’t.

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Opinion Viewpoint

A Herenton Indictment?

The career of Willie Herenton can be divided into two parts.

In Part One, he was the breaker of racial barriers in Memphis: the first black assistant school superintendent, the first black school superintendent, the first black mayor. In Part Two, he was the champion of black power. Not the radical black power of “Burn Baby Burn” and a clenched-fist salute, but the black economic power of an affluent class, a growing middle class, and a rising underclass.

It was in Part Two that Herenton got himself in a jam and possibly a federal grand jury investigation.

This is the Herenton who, a few years after becoming mayor, became a partner in Banneker Estates, an upscale real estate development next to his home in South Memphis that he hoped would rival similar enclaves for wealthy whites in East Memphis.

This is the Herenton who explored selling MLGW, clashed with Herman Morris, installed his protégé Joseph Lee, and insisted that MLGW reallocate its lucrative bond business so that firms in Memphis, including one where his son worked, got more business.

This is the Herenton who hired special adviser/real estate man Pete Aviotti, who says the mayor has “a passion” for real estate.

This is the Herenton who co-existed with Shelby County mayor Jim Rout and special adviser Bobby Lanier and a posse of hostile suburban mayors for 16 years and ran for city mayor a fifth time to keep Morris from getting the job.

And this is the Herenton who did deals with one E.W. Moon at Banneker Estates and downtown near Beale Street.

How you look at Herenton, builder of black economic wealth, depends somewhat on whether you are black or white. By Herenton’s lights, he has been more than fair to whites by putting them in director jobs and going along with their pet business projects.

The root of this federal investigation is minority participation, the rule that says you don’t do a big public deal in this town without black and white partners in the underwriting firms, the PR firms, the law firms, on the job sites, and any place where there’s the smell of money. Minority participation was the making and unmaking of Tennessee Waltz star witness Tim Willis, among others.

My guess is that the feds have about a one-month window to indict. After that, Mr. Obama goes to Washington, and a new attorney general gets installed along with new U.S. attorneys with Democratic loyalties and antennas.

If there is a case, it will surely have to go to Washington for review, and I can imagine the conversation going like this.

“Mr. Attorney General, we’ve got a hot one down in Memphis against the mayor who’s been in office for 17 years. He’s taken some shots over the years, but he’s still a local hero to a lot of people. He knows it, and he’ll fight like hell. Is it a go?”

“What did he do?”

“It’s a real estate deal.”

“About time. Nail a bunch of bankers and brokers, too?”

“Uh, actually, no.”

“I see. I’m kinda busy. Can we get back to you in January?”

And I can imagine the Herenton lines of defense, first in the media and then in the courtroom: It’s the Republicans’ parting shot, the sequel to Tennessee Waltz. If you can’t vote him out of office, indict him. Payback for Joseph Lee. The mayor is indicted while bankers get $25 million bonuses for destroying the global economy.

A Herenton indictment would be a national story. I can see a New York Times equivalent to The Wall Street Journal‘s obsession with the back story of the 1993 federal corruption trial of former congressman Harold Ford Sr., two months after Bill Clinton was sworn in. The pre-trial and the trial itself would be a war, tougher than the Ford trial or the trial of former Atlanta mayor (and Herenton friend) Bill Campbell, who was indicted after he left office.

It is very possible, of course, that the feds have some juicy evidence of their own and a list of witnesses ready to testify. They may even have a smoking gun.

After the Joe Lee and Ed Ford fiascoes, they better have a lot of them.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Mayor to Mayor

As Newark, New Jersey, mayor Cory Booker talked about his support for mayor-led school systems, one attendee at last week’s Leadership Academy luncheon turned to her friend and hissed, “He just fed the beast!”

Booker, Newark’s charismatic mayor of two years, had just said, “I love school boards, but in large cities, you can’t manage institutions by committees.

“This is where I get controversial.”

Indeed. All 900 sets of ears perked up.

From his seat on the stage with interviewer Gayle Rose, Booker spoke directly to Memphis mayor Willie Herenton: “I hope you get control of the schools, because if the mayor here can do it … I hope the mayor of Newark gets a chance, as well.”

While attendees were eating pasta and pecan pie, Herenton was being offered a slice of something different, and it certainly wasn’t humble pie.

With Booker supporting Herenton’s long-awaited hope of taking over the school system — a thing he has tried to do by consensus, state legislature, and resignation — it’s no surprise people were concerned the statement would go to the mayor’s head.

Before running for mayor, Booker was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Yale Law School graduate, and was elected to the City Council at the age of 29. His first unsuccessful bid for Newark mayor in 2002 was the subject of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Street Fight.

He is clearly hyper-intelligent and funny. After Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis treasurer Martha Perrine Beard referenced the honor of sitting at a table with three mayors, Booker corrected her with “three sexy mayors.”

More substantially, and a subject that has garnered its share of press, was Booker’s decision to live in Brick Towers, a public housing project, from 1998 to 2006. He obviously likes to be in the thick of things.

Rose asked Booker about the economy — “This is an opportunity for our generation to show who we are, to show our salt, our mettle,” he said — and poverty — “I tell people the biggest problem in America is poverty, but I say it’s poverty of imagination, poverty of action, and poverty of love.”

As mayor, Booker’s goal is to turn Newark into the national standard for urban transformation. So far, murder and shooting rates are down 40 percent in the New Jersey city, so it seems he’s well on his way.

Booker said you have to do “whatever it takes.” And sometimes that means doing it yourself, especially when you consider yourself the city’s chief accountability officer.

In trying to decrease Newark’s high crime rate, Booker started driving the city from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., pulling over and checking up on on-duty police officers (something he joked he enjoyed doing as a black man).

“There’s a belief that urban areas have to tolerate a certain amount of crime — that’s a toxic belief,” he said.

He asked a number of police officers to help him patrol the early morning hours, but he said he lets them chase the criminals.

“I ran once and pulled my hamstring,” he joked. “Now I help them search for drugs. I’m on my belly in someone’s backyard looking for drugs. People are coming out of their houses: ‘Mr. Mayor, is that you?'”

His story garnered laughter and applause from the crowd, and I couldn’t help but remember the 2004 incident when Herenton observed several officers rough-housing during a routine traffic stop.

At the time, there was laughing, but I’m not sure how much of it was with the mayor. And there wasn’t much applause, especially after former police director James Bolden was forced to retire roughly a week later.

So what’s the difference between Booker and Herenton? I think it boils down to “we” versus “I.” Herenton has had a lot of good ideas (and some stinkers, too) over the years, but he seems to stand alone most of the time.

Booker seems to be more about group effort.

“Just find two or three things to focus on as a group,” he told the Leadership Academy. “Even if it’s just for a year.”

But if Booker had one thing to say that I hope everyone heard it was about what he considered Memphis’ best asset.

“You’re big enough to be significant,” he said, “but small enough to show change quickly.”