In 1968, with pride, inspiration, and hopes for a brighter future, singer James Brown reminded some and introduced to others through his hit song “Say It Loud: I’m Black and I’m Proud,” that Blackness is something to be immensely proud of. Earlier that same year, the night before his brutal assassination in Memphis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached that “something is happening in Memphis” in response to the horrendous treatment of Black sanitation workers by the city, led by then Mayor Henry Loeb.
Since his campaign and the October 2023 election as the 65th mayor of Memphis, Paul Young has boldly celebrated Memphis’ Blackness as an asset and vehicle for growth. Before him, I had never heard a mayor, or any other elected official for that matter, clearly articulate an understanding of this opportunity and their assignment and power to act on it as leaders of this city.
Tom Jones’ Smart City Memphis blog “Memphis’ Potential is About Black Memphians Reaching Theirs” prompted me to recall a conversation Tom and I had about 15 years ago wherein he asked why so few Memphis leaders seemed to emphasize a Black wealth building strategy for this great city. Tom challenged me as an elected leader to be bolder, intentional and unapologetic about using the power bestowed upon me to do all I could to push an agenda for Black wealth creation. I began to engage other leaders and push at the systems level when I could. Along with other colleagues, I focused on the power of the school board to support Black businesses. Every chance I got, I spoke about the economic disparities between Memphis’ Black and white populations and how those disparities, more than anything else, represent the root causes of Memphis’ challenges.
Sadly, I realized that Memphis’ elected leaders lacked the political will and knowledge to develop a comprehensive vision and agenda to address the challenges. Here, I define political will as the courage to use one’s individual elected power to mobilize others into a coalition of collective elected power to make the tough and transformative decisions needed to drive economic and social mobility for poor, underserved and discriminated against communities.
Here, the poor, underserved, and discriminated against communities are mostly Black Memphians. Thus, it is high time we focus our attention there. Just do the math!
The math: Memphis is 65% Black and 27% white. According to Dr. Elena Delavega’s and Dr. Gregory M. Blumental’s 2023 Memphis Poverty Fact Sheet, there are wide gaps in the income and wealth of Black and white Memphians. The median income for Black people is $41,974 compared to $76,861 for white people — a gap of $34,887. And while both measures represent growth from the previous report, the gap also grew; it was $27,459 in 2022. Further, while the poverty rate for Memphis’ Black population is 25%, it is only 12% for white Memphians. For children, it is even worse. A whopping 36% of Memphis’ Black children suffer poverty; only 10% of her white children do. To that end, analyzing Opportunity Insights’ research and tools, Mandy Spears of the Sycamore Institute found that “a child who grew up in a low-income home in Midtown had about a 16% chance of becoming a high-income adult. One mile away in North Memphis, a low-income child had less than a 1% chance.”
Continuing down this path is economically disastrous for all of Memphis. With Black people representing the super majority in population, low-income and prevalent poverty, the need to focus on increasing progress for Black Memphians is Economics 101 and represents our best and clear path to a stronger Memphis for all.
How will we get there? Leadership matters, and for Memphis, coordinated and collaborative political leadership is key. While on the school board, I realized just how fragmented and siloed government agencies operated. The governing bodies and agencies often made decisions without consulting with each other. My term in elected office ended more than 10 years ago. As it stands now, the Memphis area government agencies remain mostly fragmented and siloed. They still lack a shared vision, goals and system of accountability. To be sure, there are moments when agencies come together on initiatives. But, with a schools, city and county combined annual budget of more than $4.5 billion, and the ultimate decision-making power over systems of economic mobility, the collective power of local government is essential to improving Memphis. Instead of a siloed, micro-agency approach to leadership, we need a collective strategy wherein the agencies work together towards durable outcomes and measurable impact.
In working together, our leaders need to keep the main thing, the main thing. Crime is the dominant topic of discussion in our city. There is no disputing that Memphis suffers a persistent and increasing high rate of reported crime and needs strategies for strengthening public safety. What we must dispute is the notion that crime rules everything around Memphis and that the answers to Memphis’ challenges all lie in a myopic focus on fighting crime.
That thinking belies the Brookings Institute’s “research that underscores that community safety is deeply connected to neighborhood conditions produced by public and private sector disinvestment, particularly in regard to residents’ access to economic opportunity, quality education, stable housing and health care.” A brief look at Memphis’ poverty (see above), education, housing and health care data demonstrates this connection. On the latest state assessment, 22% and 15% of Memphis’s students scored proficient or above in English Language Arts and Math, respectively. As reported by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, Memphis has a shortage of approximately 36,000 affordable housing units, and 16.2% of Memphians under 65 lack health insurance, compared with 11.9% of Tennesseans and 9.8% of Americans.
To accomplish real transformation, the Memphis-area elected bodies must work more interdependently, with a direct focus on strategies that lead to Black wealth creation. Memphis challenges were not created through race-neutral strategies — they surely will not be solved in race-neutral ways. Through multiple reports, including the county disparity study, the MSCS disparity study and a recent gathering to discuss the city’s Black-led businesses disparities, we know that Black businesses have faced government discrimination.As a result, we have the justification for bold, race-based government contracting programs targeting the Black community. Thus, a great start would be forming a city, county and school system formal interagency partnership with a commitment of collaboratively doing whatever it takes to significantly increase their contracting with Black-led businesses. That strategy worked well for Atlanta and the Washington, D.C. area — it can work well here, too!
With new leadership, there is a fantastic opportunity for a new direction for Memphis. I challenge our new mayor and city council, the county commission and the school board to usher in a new way of working, where instead of siloed focuses on crime, collaborative focuses on Black-wealth creation rules everything around Memphis. Because that is our real cream — dollar dollar bills y’all.
Tomeka Hart Wigginton is the founder and principal of The HarWigg Group. She holds the Harvard Kennedy School Public Leadership Credential and is a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project and the National Black Child Development Institute.
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