Civil Wrongs

One hundred years ago on May 8, a Black man who could not swim saved 32 white people from drowning in the Mississippi River. 

That heroic act got him a meeting with President Calvin Coolidge and a house in North Memphis. And one of Downtown’s most iconic parks honors his heroism. His name was Tom Lee.

The park was not always welcoming to Black people — even his own descendants. But those striving to keep his story alive, fro...

In this Memphis neighborhood, the economic potential of its future is just as important as the telling of its past. The Klondike Smokey City Community Development Corporation has been working for years to provide affordable homeownership for residents while also preserving its history. 

Resources mentioned in this story:

• Klondike Smokey City Community Development Corporation
• Monument Lab Re:Generation grant
• Northside Sq...

The 1968 Memphis sanitation worker's strike was a pivotal point in the Civil Rights Movement. It eventually led to the fatal shooting of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel. Local activists say that although the tragic event left a stain on the Bluff City, it is important to remember the positive change that came in the aftermath of the strike. For the past eight years, The BIG We has been hosting communi...

In 1961, Dwania Kyles was among the first group of 13 Black children to integrate Memphis’ public school system. To aid in her own healing from that traumatic experience, she became a certified wellness coach. Now, she helps others find healing through deep abdominal breathing, which is known to help reduce stress, anxiety, blood pressure, and heart rate.

Resources mentioned in this episode: 

• Dwania Kyles: Speaker, Civ...

Next time you’re walking down South Main Street in Memphis and find yourself in front of one downtown’s longest-standing art galleries, look down. You might learn something. 

Miniature paintings by artist Ephraim Urevbu are now embedded in the sidewalk. Inside them are QR codes that share the more difficult chapters of American history. For our continuing Civil Wrongs series, Laura Kebede-Twumasi sat down with him to talk a...

When pundits and politicians talk about rural America, it’s often another way of saying white America. 

But that would also be a misperception, according to the Brookings Institution. The share of people of color living in rural areas has increased in the last decade from one-fifth to about a quarter.

As racial diversity in small towns increases, some are working to improve racial understanding there.

This episode is part of ...

Black farmers have lost 90% of the land they once owned since 1920. Oral histories of the massacre say land was stolen from victims and survivors. One local group, the Elaine Legacy Center, is digging into the research in hopes of community repair. 

Resources mentioned in this episode: 

The Elaine Legacy Center

Fund for Reparations NOW!

Reuters: U.S. Black farmers lost $326 bln worth of land in 20th century -study

TIAA Divest

Th...

The Elaine Massacre of 1919 was one of the deadliest in American history and for decades, its story was suppressed. Descendants of this tragedy say they are still feeling its effects in their small rural Arkansas community. 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Facebook group: Descendants of The Elaine Massacre Victims

Blood in Their Eyes by Grif Stockley, Brian K. Mitchell & Guy Lancaster

Newspaper: "Negro Plot to Rise Ag...

Starting in the immediate aftermath, a "hush mouth" campaign ensued across Phillips County, Arkansas to stifle the telling of the massacre. Now, there are few places that tell the story, and those that do are surrounded by controversy. 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

The Elaine Legacy Center

Delta Cultural Center

Elaine Massacre Memorial

Helena Museum of Phillips County

Delta Heritage Trail

U.S. Supreme Court decision, Moor...

The racist caricature that Black people are inherently lazy and morally corrupt underscored the perceived authority of Earle, Arkansas sheriff’s deputy Paul Peacher to haul men off to forced labor in the 1930s. Nearly a century later, similar stereotypes of people with addictions may be driving approaches to their treatment.

It’s called work therapy. Every year, thousands of people are required to work without pay as part...

Slavery was still happening in eastern Arkansas in the 1930s — seven decades after Emancipation.

Efforts to seek better pay and working conditions by the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, a rare interracial labor organization, sparked violent backlash from the planter class. One sheriff’s deputy went so far as to arrest and enslave eight Black men on trumped up charges so they could work on land that he was leasing.

In this...

Though the Memphis Massacre is virtually excluded from U.S. history education, it has had a long-lasting impact on civil rights, including a direct correlation to the passage of the 14th Amendment.  

“I think yes, we can draw a very direct line from the Memphis Massacre to the 14th Amendment,” said Tim Huebner, a history professor at Rhodes College. “It was very clear [after the massacre] that the federal government was g...

The ruthlessness of the white mobs during the massacre extended to sexual violence. Multiple women were raped over three days, including five who were brave enough to testify to the congressional committee. It’s unsurprising; rape was used as a sadistic form of control over the enslaved. And with a bloodthirsty mob set loose on Memphis, it followed a pattern set for centuries to cement white dominance as Black women were j...

The white mobs were led by a specific subset of people: Police officers who were mostly Irish immigrants. At the time, Irish immigrants were viewed as inferior to other white Americans. And with the emancipation of slaves just a year prior and the influx of Black people looking for jobs, Irishmen felt that their tenuous social status was threatened. 

The environment for violence had been brewing for some time. As violence...

A year after the Civil War, in May 1866, widescale violence erupted in Memphis. White mobs led by police brutalized the Black community, beating and shooting any Black person they could find, but especially targeting Black Union soldiers who had just been discharged. At least 46 Black men, women and children were killed, 75 others were injured, and at least five women were raped. Every single Black school and place of wors...

In this final episode of our inaugural season, we discuss police interrogation tactics in 1917 and their connection to false confessions today. We talk to a researcher who studies the intersection of psychology and criminal justice and ways to protect the innocent and a former Memphis police chief who lived the complexities of race and policing. We also examine cases identified by local reporters as possible cases of false...

Ell Persons’ lynching made national headlines in 1917 and even spurred a 10,000-strong silent march in New York. Yet, his story has rarely been told. Little is known about his life.

We walk you through what was going on in Memphis at the time that set the stage for his lynching, law enforcement's tolerance of mob violence, and the Black resistance that followed.

Resources mentioned in this episode: 

• Lethal Punis...

Please be aware that we discuss extreme violence and that you’ll hear racial slurs that were common to the time. 

In this second episode about the Ell Persons lynching of 1917, we talk to the people alive today who have deep connections to this century-old story. There’s Michele Whitney, Ell Persons’ great grandniece, who never knew about this piece of family history until a Memphis organization reached out to her in 2017...