“I AM MEMPHIS”: Jim Strickland and the Politics of Memory

It seems that in recent years the debate around politics of memory have steadily picked up steam. In Memphis, in particular, it was the political memorializing of Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest that brought down their likenesses in two of the city’s public spaces. The legacy of contested individuals who mean vastly polarizing things to various people is an ongoing battle, as well as the rhetoric and dialogue that surround that legacy.

Mayor Jim Strickland is an active participant in the sphere of memory and legacy politics. University of Memphis Prof. Antonio de Velasco, in an article published through MLK50, takes a look at how Strickland’s rhetoric on Memphis’ past, especially in regards to the legacy of MLK, compares to his conduct in City Hall. To put it simply, King and Strickland may not have been the warmest of friends today.

Over the past few weeks, Strickland has begun rebranding the Sanitation Strike, in an effort to pay homage to King and celebrate the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement. The phrase “I AM MEMPHIS” began appearing on the sides of busses, on billboards, and perhaps most ironically, on garbage trucks, replacing the Memphis sanitation workers’ iconic cry of “I AM A MAN.”

The new slogan was accompanied by a planned “reverse march” retracing the steps of the Sanitation Strike which because of the weather was turned into a celebration at the Orpheum, where political analyst Angela Rye made her disapproval crystal clear: “Your campaign is I am Memphis. But is the Memphis that Dr. King would have seen in the promised land where the right to protest is met with the blacklisting of activists?”

Rye’s comments were bold, direct, and indicative of the growing frustration with Strickland’s manipulation of memory. The same Mayor ran a campaign on populist anti-crime rhetoric. The same Mayor scorned the I-40 bridge protests as a waste of time. The same Mayor put Mary Stewart, whose son Darrius Stewart was killed by police officers in 2015, on an activist blacklist which did not allow her to enter City Hall without police escort.

The contradiction is clear. How can Strickland memorialize and praise the most historically prominent leader in the modern Movement, yet pocket a secret blacklist of local activists that undermines their citizenship?

Velasco and Rye are both touching on an important notion that Strickland is too comfortable with. The master narrative of the black freedom struggle holds that the Movement for African American freedom rights ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1968, if it hadn’t already ended in Memphis in April 1968 at the Lorraine Motel. This narrative is a perfect example of the power of the politics of memory. It allows people to be comfortable with the concept that African Americans are now equal and have been for fifty years.

King’s battle is ongoing, and few cities in America illustrate that more than Memphis. A 21^st century city with astronomical child poverty and deeply segregated neighborhoods is a poor fit for a celebration for the achievements in race relations of the 1960s.

It’s going to take more than taking down a handful of statues for Strickland to evade criticism. It’s going to take community investment, actual listening, and a reckoning with the implications of the Memphis of the past on the Memphis of the present.

And if Strickland is even beginning to think that taking down the Confederate statues downtown has purged his tenure from any frustration with his racial antagonism, he is horribly wrong.