Clockwise from bottom left: Shahidah Jones and Erica Perry, both of the Official Black Lives Matter Memphis chapter; Pastor Andre Johnson; Charles McKinney; Keedran Franklin of Coalition of Concerned Citizens and the C-3 Land Cooperative; Pastor Earle Fisher; political commentator Angela Rye; and Cardell Orrin of Stand for Children. The group met at Hotel Napolean Saturday before Rye spoke at the #IAmMemphis event.

Before hundreds filled the Orpheum Theatre Saturday morning for the city’s #IAmMemphis event, before Mayor Jim Strickland praised the sacrifice of the 1968 sanitation strikers, before the guest speaker — political commentator Angela Rye — took the stage and delivered a fiery rebuke of Strickland and the city, there was a meeting.

At a breakfast meeting with progressive organizers, Rye took notes as they ran through a litany of concerns that boil down to this: As the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination approaches, Memphis hasn’t made as much progress toward King’s dream as it wants the world to believe.

Rye, best known for her insightful and incisive commentary on CNN, nodded. The city offered her so much to speak she told the organizers that she’d wondered what was wrong.

What’s wrong, the Memphians told her, is the city’s endemic poverty, harassment of protesters and divestment in public education. Plus, said Shahidah Jones of the Official Black Lives Matter Memphis chapter, the city’s policing tactics are nothing more than “regurgitated stop and frisk.”

What came next was textbook solidarity. Rye, a political dynamo, joined forces with Memphis activists who feel slighted by Strickland — the city’s first white mayor in decades.

From her sizable speaking fee, Rye promised to donate $5,000 to the BLM chapter’s bail fund and another $5,000 to the black-led C-3 Land Cooperative, a nonprofit community land trust that serves the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods.

Rye went straight from the meeting to the Orpheum Theatre, where she took the stage with Strickland sitting just feet away. In just a matter of minutes, she’d crafted the organizer’s frustrations into a speech and issued a biting critique of the city and a challenge to its residents.

Political commentator Angela Rye challenges Memphis to fulfill Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream at the City of Memphis’ “I Am a Man” event Feb. 24 at the Oprheum Theatre. Photo by Andrea Morales

“Your campaign is called ‘I Am Memphis,’ but is this the Memphis that Dr. King would have seen in the promised land when the right to protest is met with the black listing, literally, of activists?” Rye asked.

“ Are you proud of this Memphis — this Memphis that sounds entirely too familiar to the Memphis that rejected Dr. King in 1968?”

The crowd, made up largely of people from Fullview Baptist Church, youth with the Memphis Ambassadors program and members of historically black Greek-letter organizations, was initially quiet, but Rye was undeterred.

“You wanted to have a reverse march today and you couldn’t and you couldn’t because we can’t substantially honor progress that doesn’t exist,” she said. “The black child poverty rate is the highest in the nation, one of the highest rates of disconnected youth in the nation.

“The city of Memphis spends more on policing than on education. There’s unlawful surveillance of activists… eerily familiar to what Dr. King went through with J. Edgar Hoover.”

Wearing a black beret, Rye, named for activist Angela Davis, repeated what organizers such as the ones she called by name — Tami Sawyer, Keedran Franklin, Pastor Earle Fisher, Pastor Andre Johnson and Jones — have been saying to the mayor, who continues to be dismissive of their work.

“Revisionist history is what makes us love Dr. King,” Rye said, getting emotional. “It is the pulling of the quotes that are the easiest to digest, it’s not the hard truth of his worth. And I’m crying in frustration because we can do better as a people, we must do better as a people.”

After her speech, in her dressing room behind stage, Rye and her team were told to wait for the mayor. He never showed up, but the city’s chief communications officer, Ursula Madden, did, and shook hands with Rye.

The City of Memphis’ Chief Communications Officer Ursula Madden thanks political commentator Angela Rye after Rye’s remarks Saturday at the “I Am a Man” event. Photo by Wendi C. Thomas.

In an interview with The Commercial Appeal’s Jennifer Pignolet, Strickland claimed ignorance of Rye’s influence.

“I didn’t know who she was,” Strickland was quoted as saying, “But that’s fine. We all should challenge each other. And she was wrong in many of her facts, she’s not from Memphis, she doesn’t know what’s going on here, but that’s fine.”

“We need to do better in the city of Memphis,” Strickland continued. “Not only city government but the people out there. And we need fewer Facebook warriors who point out problems.”

The story did not elaborate on what factual errors Strickland found in Rye’s remarks. It was not clear if Strickland was aware, as MLK50 reported on Twitter, that Rye met Saturday morning with most of the activists whose names she called out during her speech. (Tami Sawyer, the architect of the #TakeEmDown901 movement that led to the removal of the city’s Confederate monuments in December, was out of town but talked to Rye earlier in the week.)

Rye, who has 298,000 followers on Twitter to Strickland’s 13,000, saw her remarks as in line with her family’s history of activism and certainly in line with the outspokenness that she’s known for.

Before Strickland’s comments were reported, she told MLK50 this: “I said what was on my heart to share. I had the great privilege of sitting with activists and advocates this morning. I had the great privilege of speaking to some folks before I got to Memphis to really get a sense of what’s going on on the ground,” she said.

“As I go into other communities, I think it’s so important to be connected to what’s actually happening so that you can be a voice and an advocate and a champion for what’s right…. It’s just incumbent upon us as we commemorate the 50th anniversary — not of just the sanitation workers’ strike but also Dr. King’s death — that we make progress and I’m committing my life to making progress.

“I’m committing my life to challenging myself, even when it’s hot and uncomfortable, and I think it’s my responsibility to do the same thing everywhere. I think real love means pushing people towards change. Real love sometimes feels like chastening, it doesn’t always feel comfortable.”

How did folks on social media respond? Kirstin L. Cheers breaks it down here. And read MLK50 writer Melonee Gaines’ account of the entire event. And get into a transcript of Rye’s remarks right here.

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This story is brought to you by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit reporting project on economic justice in Memphis. Support independent journalism by making a tax-deductible donation today.