This is part five of a 10-part series on the first tenant movement in Memphis. Read part 4 here.
When Memphis renters have turned to militant tactics since the early 1970s, the tone has felt fundamentally different. Frequently, retaliation from housing officials and a lack of outside support have made tenants much less willing to risk eviction by organizing together.
There was 1977, for instance, when tenants threatened a rent strike against the Shelby County Housing Authority. At a time when the city and county managed public housing separately, SCHA’s Board of Commissioners appointed a new executive director in an unannounced, closed meeting — violating Tennessee’s “Sunshine Law.” The new executive director, David Field Jr., was a white man who’d previously worked as a senior counselor at the county jail. The previous three directors had been Black; all had left within two years.
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When the news broke, about 50 tenants protested at a follow-up board meeting led by a Black woman named Annette Whitfield. Whitfield told commissioners that SCHA’s leadership should reflect the demographics of its tenants and warned that “residents will do whatever necessary to see that [Field] doesn’t take the job, including withholding rents and refusing to let new residents move in.” Nevertheless, the strike never materialized. A month later, the tenants held a vote on what to do — and a majority voted to hold off and “give [Field] a chance.”
In 1990, another strike threat hit Memphis Housing Authority — this one much larger. In response to widespread maintenance complaints and a “long-running feud” with MHA administrators, leaders of five local tenant associations called for residents to withhold their rent. Those tenant associations represented around 7,700 people, a quarter of all MHA residents at that time. Pauline Lewis, then-president of the Foote Homes Tenant Association, told the press that strike leaders sought more repairs at their projects and the removal of MHA’s executive director and board chair.
But once again, the strike was a hard sell for most tenants. Soon after the announcement, MHA Executive Director Cary Woods sent a memo to every housing project in the city, warning that any tenants who refused to pay rent would be evicted. When tenant leaders sued MHA to protect strikers from harassment, a judge ruled that the strike didn’t have any legal standing. Between strike leaders’ controversial dialogues with MHA and tenants’ fears of losing their homes, the campaign was dead in the water within two months.
On a panel in 1971, Herman Ewing, then executive director of the Memphis Urban League, spoke to a central challenge in improving the city’s housing: “Housing is a most volatile problem, bringing the kind of frustration poor people are faced with day in and day out.” Organizing tenants meant facing the city’s poverty and racism head-on — at a time when organizers were still reckoning with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death and the mass movement he never got to build.
If you never knew there was a militant response from Black folks fighting for their lives in Memphis slums and projects, think again. Read the whole series here.
When Jesse Epps rebranded his American Tenants Union in 1978, for example, King’s legacy seemed to figure heavily in Epps’ new vision. During his announcement, Epps told reporters, “It is fitting and proper that we begin here in Memphis … we currently have no program, no vehicle by which to implement the dream which King espoused.”
Perhaps that’s one more reason why the city’s first tenant movement didn’t last: stuck somewhere between the past and the present, in the shadow of an unfulfilled dream, it was never given enough room to flourish on its own terms.
But as Memphis goes through another housing crisis — what former Mid-South Peace & Justice Center executive director Brad Watkins has called a “dry Katrina” — the movement’s legacy feels more important than ever, a reminder that a grassroots struggle for housing justice isn’t out of reach.
Even now, tenants across the city are waiting for a chance to speak their demands into the open air.
Justin A. Davis is a freelance journalist, music critic and former grassroots organizer. He’s covered politics, pop culture and history for outlets like Scalawag magazine, Waging Nonviolence, Post-Trash and Science for the People. He lives in Memphis.
Coming Monday
Part 6: When Black power doesn’t keep the lights on
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