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Ambitious New Initiative Strives To Dismantle The Poverty Trap In Memphis

By David Waters Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, addressed in a launch of More for Memphis, an ambitious community development initiative to improve social and economic mobility in Memphis and Shelby County. (Photo courtesy of More for Memphis) For tens of thousands of children in Memphis, most of them children of color, poverty […]
The post Ambitious New Initiative Strives To Dismantle The Poverty Trap In Memphis appeared first on The Tennessee Tribune.
The post Ambitious New Initiative Strives To Dismantle The Poverty Trap In Memphis first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Published

3 years ago

May 16, 2023

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Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, addressed in a launch of More for Memphis, an ambitious community development initiative to improve social and economic mobility in Memphis and Shelby County. (Photo courtesy of More for Memphis)

For tens of thousands of children in Memphis, most of them children of color, poverty is not a temporary living condition. It’s a trap constructed generations ago and maintained by adults, policies and systems that neglect, exclude and exploit.

A child who grows up in a low-income home in Memphis has about a 4 percent chance of becoming a high-income adult. That compares to a 6 percent chance for a child who grows up in a low-income home in Tennessee, and a 12 percent chance for a child in America.

The differences within Memphis are even more stark, according to a study by Tennessee’s Sycamore Institute.

A child who grows up in a low-income home in Midtown has a 16 percent of becoming a high-income adult. A child who grows up next door in North Memphis has a 1 percent chance. A child in Frayser has a 2 percent chance.

The list of reasons that poverty persists is as long, deep and convoluted as the Mississippi River in springtime.

“It’s complex,” said Mark Sturgis, executive director of Seeding Success, a local nonprofit that works to advance social and economic mobility in Memphis.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t do something about it. We have to do more and do better.”

That’s the goal of More for Memphis, the most ambitious local community development initiative since the 1979 Memphis Jobs Conference, convened by then-Gov. Lamar Alexander.

For the past three years, Sturgis and dozens of other representatives of local government, business, nonprofits, philanthropy, education, neighborhoods, and faith and arts communities have been meeting to envision, design and launch a “multi-sector, cross-community collaboration” to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.

In short, to dismantle the Memphis poverty trap.

They plan to present their initial recommendations to city and county public officials in May.

Mark Sturgis

The Memphis City Council, the Shelby County Commission, and the Memphis-Shelby County Schools board already have agreed to support the process, though there are no financial commitments yet. More for Memphis leaders are working to get similar commitments from this year’s mayoral candidates.

“If this works, it will be the most comprehensive and inclusive community development plan and have the largest social impact in the city’s history,” Sturgis said. “But there are a lot of challenges ahead.

he challenges are dauntMemphis, one of the nation’s poorest big cities, is overseen by four levels of government (city, county, state and federal) with everchanging leaders, and often com

The challenges are daunting.

Thirty years ago, about 1 in 5 Memphians lived below the poverty line. Now 1 in 4 do.

Poverty hasn’t deepened here, but it has spread.

There are about 80 Census tracts in Memphis that are experiencing high poverty — double the number 40 years ago, according to the Economic Innovation Group. Thirty-eight Census tracts have experienced persistent poverty since 1980.

More for Memphis leaders say loosening poverty’s local grip could be especially difficult here for several reasons.

Memphis is overseen by four levels of government (city, county, state and federal) with everchanging leaders, and often competing priorities and conflicting problems.

“Patchwork policymaking is the enemy of systemic change because everyone’s doing their own thing in their own corner,” said Haley Simmons, chief public policy officer for Seeding Success. “They’re not focusing on the connectedness of the world.”

Local policymakers face another challenge. Memphis (and Tennessee) have tax structures primarily built on property values and retail sales, which unevenly burden the working poor. Governments promote the city’s low-cost labor force and tax base, and often use tax incentives to reward companies that provide even more low-paying jobs.

“The whole system is designed to maintain the status quo,” said Cardell Orrin, executive director of Stand for Children and one of six “focus area” leaders of More for Memphis. “The status quo is so ingrained in our systems and mindsets that even our Black leaders are afraid to try something different. We’re a majority Black city that doesn’t value Black people.”

Cardell Orrin

Meanwhile, the city’s entrenched generational poverty creates and sustains living and working conditions that generate and exacerbate trauma, blight, violence and other factors that further impair social and economic mobility, despite countless efforts to address those problems.

Memphis has more nonprofit organizations per 10,000 population than any other major city, and 60 percent of them work with low-income people.

“We are program rich and systems poor,” Sturgis said. “We have a lot of programs to help the poor, but our systems are designed to keep people in poverty. We need to dismantle those systems and build a new civic structure that is better coordinated, more efficient and equitable, more connected to the people who are living in poverty.”

That new civic structure will be crucial to the long-term success of More for Memphis.

“We’re not developing and funding a new organization or a new program,” said Jamilica Burke, chief strategy and impact officer for Seeding Success. “We’re funding a new collaborative that we’re building from the ground up.”

The new structure, still in the works, would establish a long-term public-private governance/management structure similar to Shelby Farms Park Conservancy or First 8 Memphis.

First 8 is a nonprofit corporation that partners with more than three dozen local governments and nonprofits to support, coordinate, and administer funding for early childhood care and education programs.

Shelby Farms Park Conservancy is a nonprofit organization that manages and operates Shelby Farms Park and Shelby Farms Greenline through a private-public partnership with Shelby County Government.

“These types of constructs are typical in public infrastructure projects, but have not been deployed as much in this form in the social impact space,” Sturgis said.

More for Memphis will require ample and sustained funding from public and private sources, but More for Memphis is starting strong.

The initiative is backed by a $50 million conditional commitment from Blue Meridian Partners, a national nonprofit that plans to distribute $2.5 billion in unrestricted grants to “high-performance nonprofits” that are helping people escape poverty.

Natalie McKinney

More for Memphis leaders hope to use those funds to leverage another $50 million in local and state funds. The initiative also has received $500,000 from the Kresge Foundation and $1 million from Facebook.

“This will take time,” said Natalie McKinney, executive director of Whole Child Strategies and a member of the More for Memphis design team. “Generational poverty took generations to establish. There’s no quick fix. We don’t need reform. We need transformation.”

The More for Memphis process began in early 2021 with formation of a 33-member Design Committee representing various agencies, organizations and individuals from across the community.

The committee named the mission (More for Memphis) and wrote a mission statement: “To transform Memphis through dismantling unjust systems into an inclusive city with a deep sense of community, liberation, and access to wealth building systems.”

The committee established a 26-member governing body that includes six youth and six adult community members, and the leaders of six “Anchor Collaboratives”.

–Education & Youth led by Communities in Schools of Memphis.

–Health & Well-Being led by Common Table Health Alliance.

–Economic Development led by Collective Blueprint.

–Justice & safety led by Stand for Children.

–Community Development led by BLDG Memphis.

–Culture led by Memphis Music Initiative.

Each “Anchor” includes a number of partner organizations. For example, Health & Well-Being includes Legacy of Legends CDC, Shelby County Health Department, Church Health, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, Baptist Memorial Health Care, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and Youth Villages.

Members of each “anchor” workgroup have been hosting public meetings, gathering data, and examining research to develop “targeted investment strategies that become the backbone of the community-wide improvement plan.”

Those strategies will be incorporated into a comprehensive More for Memphis plan that will be presented to city and county officials in May.

“This is where the real opportunity is to bring our work together, leverage those private dollars to do the things we wish we could do together and do them well, to do them right, and to build a lasting system of impact,” Sturgis said.

That lasting impact will depend on how well More for Memphis addresses the fact that equality isn’t equity. That economic growth and development aren’t the same as economic justice. That poverty and disparity are directly connected to the racial income and wealth gap.

The design team calls it The Big Idea:

“To improve social and economic outcomes in Shelby County through a multi-sector, cross-community collaboration, with an explicit focus on racial equity.”

The median income for Black families in Memphis has remained about half that of white families for more than five decades, according to the Memphis Poverty Fact Sheet, compiled by the School of Social Work at the University of Memphis.

Black families in Memphis have, on average, 6 pennies for every $1 white families have.

The net worth of Black residents with college degrees is less than 20 percent that of white residents. It’s barely 6 percent for the average Black family.

Local minority-owned businesses still only account for less that one percent of business receipts citywide.

“The people and organizations in distressed neighborhoods don’t have the capital they need to build equity, to start their own businesses, to transform their own communities,” said Orrin. “We’re talking about the destructive impact of generations of disinvestment.”

The emphasis on racial equity and economic justice is what makes More for Memphis fundamentally different from the 1979 Memphis Jobs Conference and its successors.

As Tom Jones of Smart City Consulting pointed out in an analysis published by MLK50 in 2017, the Memphis Jobs Conference focused on expanding the number of low-paying jobs. It worked.

From 1990 to 2012, the number of low-wage jobs in the Memphis region increased by 40 percent. Meanwhile, middle-income jobs increased by 10 percent, and high-income jobs went up 19 percent.

Hundreds of Memphians have been meeting regularly for three years to envision, design and launch More for Memphis, a “multi-sector, cross-community collaboration” to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. (Photo courtesy of More for Memphis)

“The new economic agenda produced by the (Jobs Conference) reflected the influence of the powers-that-be that benefitted most from cheap labor,” Jones wrote. “Tourism, warehouses and distribution, and new agricultural methods were set as top priorities although university economists warned that low wages characterized all three sectors.”

The “low-wage” poverty trap isn’t just a Memphis problem, but it is a monumental problem in Memphis.

A larger share of workers in the United States (23 percent) make low wages — earning less than two-thirds of median wages — than in any other industrialized nation in the world.

By comparison, about 17 percent of workers in Britain make low wages, 11 percent in Japan, and 5 percent in Italy.

In Memphis, about 45 percent (212,000) of all workers make low wages (defined as less than $10 an hour).

“We’ve been selling this community as a low-wage, low-cost, low-taxes prize for employers and developers,” Orrin said. “All that has given us is a low-opportunity, high-poverty community. We’ve built poverty into our economic system.”

Low wages lead to substandard housing and high-interest debt.

Memphis has about 40,000 fewer affordable housing units than it needs, given its number of low-income residents, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Low-income renters generally spend more than 60 percent of their income on rent — double the national average.

That puts a severe strain on low-income household budgets, leading to another trap.

Memphis tops the list of U.S. cities with the worst payday lending problems, according to DebtHammer.

(Nashville and Chattanooga also make the Top Ten, thanks to state laws that allow predatory lenders to charge triple-digit interest rates on short-term loans. State laws also give predatory lenders repayment priority over mortgage, rental and utility companies and other debtors.)

There are more than 100 high-cost loan storefronts in the city, more than twice the number of Starbucks and McDonald’s combined, according to the Hope Policy Institute.

Payday, car title, and consumer installment loans are “charging up to 450 percent interest on loans that effectively ensnare the working poor into webs of long-term debt,” said Rev. J. Lawrence Turner, president of the Black Clergy Collaborative.

Payday lending practices was one of 54 “problem statement topics” considered at a recent More for Memphis gathering.

Others included: rental housing stability and eviction rates; vacant commercial corridors; disproportionate investment in incarceration and related systems; early education and literacy; impact of trauma on children, adolescents and adults.

The 54 “problems” covered economic and community development, banking and finance, housing, transportation, education, health care, public safety, and various other systems.

“All these systems are connected,” McKinney said. “All impact children, families and neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by poverty. Applying short-term solutions to the enduring, generational nature of poverty simply doesn’t work.”

Jake Lankford, an intern for the Institute for Public Service Reporting and a graduate journalism student at the University of Memphis, contributed reporting to this story.

The post Ambitious New Initiative Strives To Dismantle The Poverty Trap In Memphis appeared first on The Tennessee Tribune.

The post Ambitious New Initiative Strives To Dismantle The Poverty Trap In Memphis first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

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Black Artists in America, Installation Three Wraps at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens

TRI-STATE DEFENDER — With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

Published

3 weeks ago

March 24, 2026

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By Candace A. Gray | Tri-State Defender

The tulips gleefully greet those who enter the gates at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens on an almost spring day. More than 650,000 bulbs of various hues are currently on display. And they are truly breathtaking.

Inside the gallery, and equally as breathtaking, is the “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” exhibit, which runs through Sunday, March 29. This is the third installment of a three-part series that started years ago and illustrates part of the Black experience through visual arts in the 20th century.

“This story picks up where part two left off,’’ said Kevin Sharp, the Linda W. and S. Herbert Rhea director for the Dixon. “This era is when we really start to see the emergence of these important Black artists’ agency and freedom shine through. They start to say and express what they want to, and it was a really beautiful time.”

With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

“Though [Davis] was from LA, he actually lived in Memphis for a decade,” said Sharp. “He was a dean at Memphis College of Art, and later opened the first gallery in New York owned and operated by black curators.”

Another featured artist is former NFL player, Ernie Barnes. His work is distinctive. Where have you seen one of his most popular paintings, Sugar Shack? On the end scene and credits of the hit show “Good Times.” His piece Saturday Night, Durham, North Carolina, 1974 is in this collection.

Memphis native James Little’s “The War Baby: The Triptych” is among more than 50 works featured in “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, the final installment of a three-part series highlighting the impact and evolution of Black artists through 2011.

The exhibit features other artists with Memphis ties, including abstract painter James Little, who was raised in a segregated Memphis and attended Memphis Academy of Art (before it was Memphis College of Art). He later moved to New York, became a teacher and an internationally acclaimed fixture in the art world in 2022 when he was named a Whitney Biennial selected artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Other artists like Romare Bearden, who had a Southern experience but lived up North, were featured in all three installments.

“During this period of time, he was a major figure,” said Sharp. “He wrote one of the first books on the history of African American art during a time when there were more Black academics, art teachers, more Black everything!”

Speaking of Black educators, Sharp said the head curator behind this tri-part series and Dixon’s partner in the arts is Earnestine Jenkins, Ph.D., an art history professor at the University of Memphis, who also earned a Master of Arts degree from Memphis State University (now UofM). “We began working with Dr. Jenkins in 2018,” he said.

Sharp explained that it takes a team of curators, registrars, counterparts at other museums, and more, about three years to assemble an exhibit like this. It came together quite seamlessly, he added. Each room conjured up more jaw-dropping “wows” than the one before it. Each piece worked with the others to tell the story of Black people and their collective experience during this time period.

One of the last artists about whom Sharp shared information was Bettye Saar, who will turn 100 years old this year. She’s been working in Los Angeles for 80 years and is finally getting her due. Her medium is collages or assemblages, and an incredible work of hers is on display. She’s married to an artist and has two daughters, also artists.

The exhibit catalogue bears some of these artists’ stories, among other scholarly information.

The exhibit, presented by the Joe Orgill Family Fund for Exhibitions, is culturally and colorfully rich. It is a must see and admission to the Dixon is free.

Visit https://www.dixon.org/ to learn more.

Fun Facts: An original James Little design lives in the flooring of the basketball court at Tom Lee Park, and he makes and mixes his own paint colors.

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Grief, Advocacy, and Education: A Counselor Reflects on Black Maternal Health

SAN DIEGO VOICE & VIEWPOINT — Last month healthcare leaders, birth workers, and community members gathered to honor the legacy of Charleston native Dr. Janell Green Smith, a nurse-midwife and doctor of nursing practice who died in January from childbirth complications. She had participated in more than 300 births and specialized in helping Black women give birth safely.

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3 weeks ago

March 24, 2026

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By Jennifer Porter Gore | Word-In-Black | San Diego Voice and Viewpoint

In 2024, the number of U.S. mothers who died as a result of pregnancy or childbirth dropped compared to 2023. But while slightly fewer Black mothers died that year, they still had three times the mortality rate of white women.

South Carolina’s rates of maternal deaths outpaced even the national rates. In fact, the state’s overall rate of maternal deaths between 2019 and 2023 was higher than all but eight states and the District of Columbia.

Last month healthcare leaders, birth workers, and community members gathered to honor the legacy of Charleston native Dr. Janell Green Smith, a nurse-midwife and doctor of nursing practice who died in January from childbirth complications. She had participated in more than 300 births and specialized in helping Black women give birth safely.

Her death shocked the community and her colleagues who are determined to address concerns about Black maternal health. The event also covered the importance of protecting mental health during grief and of men’s role in solving the maternal health crisis.

As both a therapist and a father, Lawrence Lovell, a licensed professional counselor and founder of Breakthrough Solutions, discussed ways the event’s attendees could process their grief over Green Smith’s death. He also shared ways male partners can advocate for women’s maternal health during pregnancy and childbirth.

Lovell spoke not just as a therapist but also as a father whose own family had briefly crossed paths with Green Smith. The event, he said, emerged organically from a moment of collective mourning.

Despite the grief, “it was still, like, a really beautiful event, a much-needed event, and it almost felt like we were all giving each other a collective family hug,” says Lovell.

His connection to Green Smith, Lovell says, was brief but meaningful during his wife’s pregnancy with their second child. Green Smith was practicing at the same birthing center where they had their child. She began practicing in Greenville a short time later.Even that short connection carried significance for Lovell, given the small number of Black maternal health professionals.

Lovell did not initially plan to become a mental health practitioner; he chose the career path after graduating from college, when someone suggested he consider psychology. His interest deepened when he noticed how few Black men work in mental health.

“Being Black man and playing football in college, there weren’t a lot of people that look like me talking about mental health,” says Lovell. “[I wanted] to give people that look like me an opportunity to work with someone that looks like them.”

Working with Expectant and New Parents

Lovell often counsels couples preparing for parenthood by, helping partners understand what a successful pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum recovery look like. That often means helping women manage postpartum depression.

As a man, Lovell says, it’s “humbling” that a woman “just trusts me enough to work with me through their pregnancy or their postpartum recovery.”

In his work, Lovell has noticed how few men understand pregnancy before they experience it with their partner. Because early pregnancy symptoms are often invisible, he says, men may underestimate how much support a mom-to-be actually needs.

“Sometimes they may not realize they don’t know much about pregnancy and what to expect in those three trimesters,” Lovell says. “I tell a lot of the men that just because you can’t see [she’s pregnant] doesn’t mean that she won’t appreciate your intense support in that first trimester.”

Education about pregnancy and postpartum recovery, he says, can change how men support their partners.

Teaching Advocacy in the Delivery Room

Another major focus of Lovell’s counseling is preparing men to advocate for mothers during labor.

“Helping men understand what pregnancy looks like: what delivery is going to look like, and what are the realistic expectations that I should have of myself in postpartum,” he says.

Lovell encourages partners to be honest about their expectations for what will happen during delivery. He helps them prepare for the big day by discussing the birth plan and knowing how to quickly recognize problems. Clear communication, he says, prevents misunderstandings.

He regularly trains men to ask their partners detailed questions about their expectations during and after pregnancy. Advocacy in medical settings can be especially important and requires attention to details the mother may not be able to address.

“It’s always important to fine-tune things and truly understand what helps your partner feel most supported,” Lovell says. “Instead of guessing, you should ask.”

Lovell recalls a moment during the birth of his first child when he had to take that role.

During the delivery, “I felt like something wasn’t as sanitary as I’d like it to be,” he says. “I asked, ‘Hey, can you switch those out? Can you change your gloves?’”

Lovell has a succinct but powerful message he regularly shares with clients’ families, and he shared it with attendees at last month’s event.

“Just to believe women,” he says. “I’ve worked with different couples, and sometimes I’m not really sure that there’s enough empathy from the men.”

That includes how women express pain.

“If a woman says, ‘my pain is at a nine,’ just because how you would express yourself at a nine is different than how she’s expressing herself at [that level] doesn’t mean you shouldn’t believe her,” he says.

Empathy, he says, can change outcomes far beyond the delivery room.

“We’ve got to believe women when they’re talking about their experiences and their feelings and their pain,” he says. “I think there’s a lot that we can prevent if we empathize better.”

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Future of Florida’s Black History Museum in Limbo

JACKSONVILLE FREE PRESS — A proposal sponsored by Tom Leek, a Republican from Ormond Beach, has now passed the Senate in back-to-back legislative sessions. But the House version, filed by Kiyan Michael, a Jacksonville Republican, did not receive final approval in either year, effectively stalling the effort.

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3 weeks ago

March 24, 2026

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Plans to establish a long-awaited Black history museum in Florida are once again on hold after legislation needed to advance the project failed to clear the state House for a second consecutive year, despite repeated approval in the Senate.

A proposal sponsored by Tom Leek, a Republican from Ormond Beach, has now passed the Senate in back-to-back legislative sessions. But the House version, filed by Kiyan Michael, a Jacksonville Republican, did not receive final approval in either year, effectively stalling the effort.

Under Florida law, identical or similar bills must pass both chambers before heading to the governor’s desk. Without House approval, the legislation has been unable to move forward, leaving the project in limbo. Long journey, contested location.

The proposed museum, formally known as the Florida Museum of Black History, has been years in the making, with lawmakers and community leaders framing it as a long-overdue institution to preserve and showcase the state’s African American heritage .A central point of contention has been the museum’s location. St. Augustine — widely recognized as the nation’s oldest city and a site deeply tied to both slavery and early Black history — emerged as the leading contender. Supporters argue the city’s historical significance makes it a natural home for the museum. However, competing interests and regional considerations have fueled debate, slowing consensus among lawmakers.

While the Senate-backed measure has consistently advanced, the lack of alignment in the House has underscored ongoing divisions about how and where the project should take shape.

The holdup in the Florida House appears to be less about opposition to the museum itself and more about a combination of procedural bottlenecks, unresolved structural issues, and lingering disagreements over how the project should be formalized and governed.

Despite the legislative setbacks, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has publicly voiced support for the museum. Speaking last month during the unveiling of a statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass in St. Augustine, DeSantis said the project would move forward “one way or another,” signaling an intent to see the museum built regardless of legislative hurdles.

The anticipated museum has already cleared several hurdles. St. Johns County signed an agreement last year with Florida Memorial University to use the land that once housed its campus last year’s legislative session netted $1 million in funding for St. Johns County to work on planning and design for the museum. However, its anticipated that a million $3 million is needed.

Still, without statutory approval to finalize key components — including governance, funding mechanisms and site selection — the project remains largely conceptual.
With the House bill failing again, the timeline for the museum’s development is unclear. Lawmakers could revisit the proposal in the next legislative session, but any further delays risk pushing the project back several more years. Advocates warn that continued inaction could stall momentum for a museum many see as critical to telling a fuller, more accurate story of Florida’s past. For now, the effort remains paused — caught between political support at the top and legislative gridlock within the Capitol.