Housing policy shifts and progressive organizations shutter

This is part four of a 10-part series on the first tenant movement in Memphis. Read part 3 here.

In 1969, tenants at nine apartment complexes in St. Louis, Missouri, began the first rent strike at public housing in the U.S., calling for rent reductions and welfare reform. After nine months, broad support from leftist groups, and over $600,000 in unpaid rent (the equivalent of around $5 million today), tenants “brought the St. Louis Housing Authority to the very brink of bankruptcy” — and brought city officials to the negotiating table. 

The St. Louis rent strike won major reforms locally, such as a new tenant affairs board, representation on the Housing Authority’s Board of Commissioners and a new rent policy “based on a tenant’s ability to pay.” It also left a big impact on federal housing laws. After strike leader Jean King testified about the strike in front of the U.S. Senate, Congress amended the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1969 to “[cap] public housing rent at 25% of a resident’s income.”

Meanwhile, in Atlanta — home to the first public housing project in the country — urban renewal created the perfect conditions for Black tenant organizing in the 1970s. Throughout the late 20th century, powerful tenant associations became a vital pathway for residents to fight for their needs until Atlanta began demolishing its public housing projects in the 1990s. 

Memphis shared many issues tenants were fighting against in St. Louis and Atlanta. As the old landscape of their neighborhoods was razed, poor Black families crowded into public housing projects that were neglected and overpoliced. 

Like those two cities, Memphis had a vibrant ecosystem of progressive and radical organizations invested in building power among the urban poor — and poor folks who weren’t afraid to risk eviction or arrest. So why didn’t Memphis’ tenant movement keep growing in the 1970s? Why didn’t we see a larger rent strike, like St. Louis, or the rise of powerful tenant leaders like Atlanta?

The 1970s saw some major shifts in housing policy that changed the stakes of organizing tenants. In 1975, the state of Tennessee passed the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, which created new legal guidelines for disputes between tenants and landlords. Neighborhood redevelopment started to change hands, as well. By 1978, MHA stopped managing its urban renewal program and sold much of its landholdings to city government. 

At the same time, the leaders of the Memphis tenant movement largely moved on, leaving a void that was never refilled. After winning her rent strike case, for example, Hayes stayed politically active and joined an economic justice group called the Memphis Welfare Rights Organization. In December 1968, she was arrested with five other MWRO members when they staged a sit-in at the state welfare office Downtown. Instead of focusing on landlords, Hayes and MWRO called on local and state welfare officials to increase public assistance and fill in gaps for poor families when their welfare payments weren’t enough. 

Meanwhile, the Tennessee Council on Human Relations slowed its activities in the Memphis area throughout the 1970s. Fanion left the Council to live as an entrepreneur: He ran a liquor store in South Memphis called Jerry Fanion’s Liquor, opened a restaurant and nightclub called St. Thomas Square and eventually moved into a longer career as a car salesman.

By 1978, the American Tenants Union’s financial instability became its most pressing issue: local chairman Edmond Jackson claimed that 500 of the chapter’s 750 members were behind on dues payments. Rumors began to spread that the group was shutting its doors. 

Later that year, ATU founder Jesse Epps briefly returned to announce that he’d rebooted the union as the American Community Union in an effort to expand the group’s organizing scope and potential membership. Although ACU’s Memphis chapter still existed on paper throughout the 1980s, their efforts fell entirely out of the public eye — while Epps focused most of the group’s national resources on Northern cities like New York and Philadelphia.

Progressive organizations were plagued by instability — from uneven funding or staffing turnovers, for example — and tensions between organizers, policymakers and tenants often created extra problems beyond the work itself. 

As much energy as the movement had, it seemingly never had the resources to become sustainable.

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.