For the Love of Memphis
“Memphis is a hard place to live right now.” I’ve heard this line often lately. I’ve had family and friends call and text to check in on me frequently. The high profile tragedies that have taken place in this city in recent months have led so many to look toward residents of this city with concern and something that feels a little like pity. It’s a very weird time to be a Memphian, and I say that as one who has only lived here with my family for about four and a half years.
My family has felt significant pain in the past six months. When the national headlines were flooded with images of the beautiful, blonde, junior kindergarten teacher who was abducted and killed on her morning jog this past September, our hearts were breaking into a million pieces. Liza Fletcher had been my oldest daughter’s teacher, and we had remained friends as we hoped that my younger daughters would also soon be in her class. Last July, I sat with several United Methodist clergy and leaders as they grieved their mentor and friend, Rev. Dr. Autura Eason-Williams, who was murdered in her driveway during a carjacking. And just a couple of weeks ago, I stood beside fellow clergy at the first press conference for the family of Tyre Nichols, after they had just viewed the horrific video footage of their son’s murder at the hands of Memphis police for the first time.
The stories of carjackings, armed robberies and shootings in this city provide a continuous flow of content for local news and community chatter. It is hard to disagree with claims that we are a city in crisis. The systems and policies that have governed this city for decades were never meant to serve all of its residents, and as such, we continue to live into life in a fragmented city. We have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty, and unlike my previous home in Nashville, which systematically sanitized the urban core and moved low-income folks further out of the city, Memphis is a city where million-dollar homes are often situated just a couple blocks away from boarded-up structures. The residents here often live in parallel universes of privilege and poverty.
Over these past six months I’ve come to understand more fully how Memphis is viewed by those who live outside of the city. “Are you guys looking to move?” is a common inquiry from both Memphians and non-Memphians alike.
What is hard to communicate over the high-profile horror stories, daunting statistics and constant buzz of fear these days is that I have never lived in a city with as much heart, soul and abundant love as Memphis, Tennessee. I’ve lived in Chicago, Denver, Cleveland, Knoxville and Nashville, and regardless of size or demographics, I have never felt more warmth radiating from residents, even in the midst of tragedy and outrage, as I do from the folks who are my neighbors right now. This morning, I had a powerful encounter that reminded me of this…
After dropping my kids off at school, I pulled up to a gas station pump at Kroger. As I pulled up, I noticed a young man, dressed in all black, wearing a surgical face mask, walking around somewhat aimlessly on the other side of the gas station. I took all the safety precautions I’ve been trained to take - parked where the clerk inside the store could see me, locked my car doors while pumping gas, saw that there were other folks around that area, etc. After a couple of minutes, the young man started walking around to the side of the gas station where I was, and then began circling my car while talking on the phone. A silver car pulled in, backed up and parked directly opposite my car at the same pump. An older gentleman got out of his car, looked over at the young man and yelled, “Young man, you are looking real suspicious right now.” The young man walked into the store, and the man stayed there until I placed the nozzle back in the pump. I noticed he never pumped gas in his car. As I prepared to leave, I smiled at him and he looked at me and said, “I work security and it’s very stressful. Things are crazy right now. I just wanted to stand here with you.” “Thank you,” I said, while not knowing quite what to say, and he got in his vehicle and drove off.
As I got back in my car, I found myself tearing up as I processed all that had just happened. I thought about how the young man who “looked suspicious” could have been simply waiting for a ride, and being clocked as suspicious simply for being a young, Black man wearing black jeans and a hoodie. I thought about how an older Black man, had seen this young man and his proximity to me, and felt compelled to involve himself for my sake. This encounter reminded me of the constant fear I am supposed to have these days, even while doing something as seemingly safe as pumping gas on a busy street at eight o’clock in the morning. But more than this, I felt SEEN and LOVED by a complete stranger, who was willing to pull over and stand beside me for a couple of minutes without saying a word about why he was doing it and without expecting anything in return. I know there are incredible politics and interpretations that can be laid upon this encounter between me, a white woman standing there in sweatpants pumping gas into her SUV, and two Black men (trust me, I’ve gone there), but I was mostly struck by the act of humanity of someone stopping just to make sure that a stranger is OK.
This morning’s experience has reminded me that despite all of the many horrible things that have happened here recently, the individual perpetrators of heinous and evil events are such a small cluster of folks compared to the countless incredible Memphians that keep entering my life each and every day that we continue to call this city our home.
Yes, the world is scary. Memphis can be scary, and we are really going through an exceptionally difficult season in this city. Despite the stark divisions that exist among race and class in this city, my prayer is that we will all see that when anyone in Memphis is suffering, we are all suffering. Because we are. When any of us live in fear, we all live in fear. And we are. And perhaps we can even come to a place of knowing that part of our collective suffering and fear is rooted in the lack of collective uplift in our city - the lack of programs, resources, and economic opportunities for all Memphians.
I am grateful to a stranger for seeing me and caring for me today, whether he needed to or not. May we all be more intentional in seeing, stopping and standing beside others in this city. We need each other.
Amen.
(Photo in Blog post is by Tyre Nichols)
