For a year, I lived in Memphis, Tennessee. I moved there to be alone. I moved there to recover from a failed engagement. I moved there for the music and the culture and to feel something akin to roots. I moved there for a bit of self-discovery, re-calibration, and a fresh start. I had landed what was supposed to be a dream job as head of fundraising and the next CEO of the Blues Hall of Fame. The job crashed and burned 5 months into the position. The pandemic shutdowns hit a month later. I was learning to live in a city that felt perpetually beat down and abandoned.
While I was working, my office looked out to the balcony where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Every day, I looked at that balcony. Every day, I saw the wreath hanging outside of room 306, and the two period cars parked below, a Dodge Royal and a white Cadillac. Nearly every day, I was confronted by a city with a complex history rich in culture, marred by racism and violence, and striving for renewal. Some of the friends I made, also transplants, would talk about how they can’t quite explain it, but the city gets in your bones… Memphis feels like the perpetual underdog with a chip on its shoulder and a song in its heart.
I lived in Memphis during the George Floyd protests of 2020. I lived in Memphis at the start of the pandemic. I lost my job before both of things happened. I spent my unemployed days looking for work, writing, and walking along the Mississippi River. For four or five nights during the Black Lives Matters protests, I joined my fellow Memphians and marched through the streets of downtown. We chanted outside of city hall. We chanted outside of the prison. We sang Amazing Grace in front of the church where Dr. King gave his last sermon. Some nights we encountered lines of police armed in riot gear. Some nights, I could feel the tension as though the city was about to blow. For those few weeks of the protests, I was glued to social media to see what was happening and would go to bed worried that parts of the city might not survive the night. It always did. In many respects, it is a city of restraint.
I don’t want to overstate the movement or my role in it. I had never done anything like that in my life and on most nights, I felt out of place and as though I had no right to add my voice to the chorus. I don’t think those protests will warrant a page in the history books and if they do, it won’t be about Memphis. Knowing all of the people who had marched for civil rights on those very streets decades earlier, it’s hard not to feel both insignificant but also like I was part of something bigger. As the city that helped birth Blues and Rock and Roll and the Civil Rights Movement, Memphis feels like it has an oversized heart and undervalued place in modern American history.
Last night, from the comfort of my Friday-night bar a thousand miles away from Memphis, I scanned the headlines and social media once again expecting the city to blow. Both NPR and the NY Times reported that cities across the country are bracing for protests as the city of Memphis releases video footage of police officers beating Tyre Nichols, who died three days later. Memphis could be ground zero. I felt nervous for the city. In some respects, I wanted to be there – much like wanting to be by someone’s side as they go through a tough time or a medical crisis. The people and things we love seem to always grow bigger in times of distress. After my friends left the bar, I sat alone for a bit. I scrolled my news feeds. I could feel a welling up inside. Protesters shut down one of the main bridges connecting Memphis to Arkansas. Ever since protesters shut down a bridge in 2016, taking the bridge has become a tactical battle cry for protests in Memphis. They attempted it one of the nights during the 2020 protests, and they attempted and succeeded this time.
I followed the news from the bar and sat remembering my time in Memphis. I kept thinking if there’s a city in which I wouldn’t blame the residents for taking it over or burning it down, it’s Memphis. With a poverty rate of 22.6%, it’s one of the poorest cities in the country, just behind my other hometown city, Philadelphia. It’s also routinely ranked as one of the most violent cities in the country – seldom slipping out of the top five major cities for violent crimes per capita. Despite these things, or perhaps because of them, I came to appreciate the city’s resilience. Memphis doesn’t get a lot of wins, but it never counts itself out. Most of the attention in Tennessee is focused on that other city to the north, the glitzier one, the whiter one, the one where money, booze, country music, and bachelorettes congregate, the one dubbed Nashvegas… an American mecca that was attracting (by some estimates) over 100 new residents per day. If Nashville is the star student, Memphis is the kid you’re pulling for because you know the odds are long and have always been stacked against him. We all love a comeback story and Memphis feels like it’s always on the ropes.
And maybe that’s the bond I have. Maybe that’s why I felt so connected and gut punched as I waited for news from Memphis. I moved to the city feeling a little beat up, maybe on the ropes and hoping for a comeback. Authenticity can often be found in vulnerability… in the loose joints and cracked facades, the velveteen rabbit whose fur has been loved off. I left Memphis before I wanted to. Like so many affairs of the heart, part of me was left behind. My time there was brief, but meaningful. I suppose lots of things in life are.