This is part 9 of a 10-part series on the first tenant movement in Memphis. Read part 8 here.
Five hours after Black Panthers and tenants occupied the office of a Memphis public housing project, a convoy of police arrived to meet them.
Leading the convoy was Chief Inspector Jack Wallace. Wallace stood at the office door clutching a cigar as officers got in contact with Memphis Housing Authority leadership. “We have a system for processing people on an emergency basis,” MHA assistant director Sam Null told reporters, “but otherwise, these people will just have to take their turn on the list along with everybody else.”
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Eventually, MHA Director Orelle Ledbetter sent word that the group could stay in the office through the weekend. For the time being, MPD would back off.
In the meantime, the Panthers decided to raise the stakes. Boyd’s situation wasn’t unique, of course: low-income Black families were getting displaced all the time, either by eviction or condemned “slum” housing. In Riverview-Kansas — where urban renewal threatened to take many older residents’ homes — the stakes felt especially high.
The Panthers recruited more families that had been recently evicted or displaced from their homes and placed low on MHA’s waitlist. Over the next two days, they filed into Texas Court, kicking in the doors of vacant units and ushering the families inside.
By early Sunday evening, the Panthers had filled a large portion of Texas Court. The exact number of families is unclear — various accounts claimed it was between eight and 17 — but there were around 60 people in total. And one more person had joined the MHA office: Calvin Taylor, the ex-Invader and The Commercial Appeal reporter.
At this point, MPD decided to return — as near to the weekend’s close as one could get. Officers shut down traffic around the apartments as squad cars began to pull up. Around 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, the Panthers began to prepare, gathering ammunition and boarding up windows with leftover construction materials. A record player played “Seize the Time,” a song by singer and BPP member Elaine Brown.
In his account of the standoff, Taylor described speaking to a tenant named Louvenia Gross, an unemployed mother of eight who’d moved into the office, too. “[The NCCF] gave me a chance,” Gross told Taylor. “Now it’s my turn to help them.”
An hour passed. The Panthers called collect to national leadership in Chicago and New York City. As children slept on quilts and their parents murmured among themselves, the Panthers checked their weapons and moved furniture to the office lobby as cover.
Around 12:15 a.m., a knock came at the office door. When a couple of Panthers opened it — expecting backup from their headquarters — police captain J.L. Molnar began to step inside. The Panthers raised their shotguns and shooed him away: “Get out, or we’ll shoot.” Their comrades shut off the lights. The parents calmed children who’d woken up and started crying.
Another 15 minutes went by before Molnar came back. Molnar shouted through the door that he had warrants for the Panthers inside. The Panthers asked for Orelle Ledbetter, the MHA director: “We want to talk to him about some decent housing for these poor people. Get us Ledbetter.” But it was Ledbetter who’d requested the warrants in the first place.
Then Jack Wallace came to the door. “That’s a problem between these people and MHA,” Wallace told the Panthers. “We’ve got no choice but to serve these warrants.”
After a short back and forth, Wallace threatened to throw tear gas into the office. An officer shattered a window with a police baton as the Panthers rushed women and children upstairs. At this point, Taylor identified himself to MPD as a reporter and tried to defuse the situation.
At the top of the stairs, the Panthers weighed their options. While planning this “live-in,” they’d assumed the women and children in the office would reduce the chance of a firefight. Now they weren’t so sure. Unwilling to risk a shootout with MPD, the Panthers agreed to give themselves up — as long as the tenants were left alone and Taylor was allowed to travel with them to the police station.
As the Panthers at Texas Court walked outside with their hands up, a separate group of police raided the Panthers’ headquarters. When officers kicked in the door at 1299 Kentucky St., two young men named Roger Lee Williams and Jerry Greer Wyatt were waiting with shotguns — but the duo quickly surrendered.
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.
Between Texas Court and the Panther headquarters, MPD arrested 16 people between the ages of 19 and 38. An officer posed with their confiscated guns for the Memphis Press-Scimitar newspaper. While most of them were charged with conspiracy to disrupt trade or commerce, Williams and Wyatt were charged with assault to murder. There was another arrestee, too: a white woman named Annie Gayle Hentz, who was parked outside Texas Court that night. MPD claimed that she honked her horn when officers arrived — as if she was warning the Panthers of their arrival — but she was quickly released.
When the sun rose Monday morning, MHA officials came to Texas Court with trucks and asked the squatting families to move out. Three of them received new apartments immediately — including Vinnie Boyd, the woman who’d started the “live-in.” Many refused to leave without formal eviction notices, however, like Louvenia Gross.
Meanwhile, police combed through the apartment complex to gather evidence for the Panthers’ trial.
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
To share this history, Davis used these resources for research:
Harland Bartholomew & Associates, “Land Use Plan for the Kansas Street Urban Renewal Area” (1972)
The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service
The Commercial Appeal Archives
Jet Magazine Archives
Caitlin Lee and Clark Randall, “Inside the St. Louis Rent Strike of 1969,” Belt Magazine (2019)
Memphis Housing Authority Annual Reports
Memphis Housing Authority, Memphis Housing: Quarter Century of Progress (circa 1960)
The Memphis Press-Scimitar Archives
Akira Drake Rodriguez, “Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta’s Public Housing” (2021)
John I. Stewart, Jr., “Racial Discrimination in Public Housing: Rights and Remedies,” The University of Chicago Law Review (1974)
University of Memphis Libraries & Rhodes College Digital Archive, Sanitation Strike Tapes (1968-1973)
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