By Wiley Henry MEMPHIS, TN — The $5.6 billion dollar Ford Motor Company’s BlueOval City project is being built on farmland in Haywood County, TN approximately 70 miles from Memphis. While the plant is a boon for Haywood County, Thomas Burrell believes it is an opportunity for Black farmers and landowners in the area to create generational wealth by incorporating and developing the land around BlueOval City. Burrell is a farmer from Covington, Tenn., and president of the Memphis-based 20,000-member Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA), a nonprofit organization. In 1991, Burrell protested the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in…
Author: Wiley Henry
By Wiley Henry MEMPHIS, TN – Juneteenth is alive and well in Memphis all monthlong and culminates June 17-18 in the 30th annual Memphis Juneteenth Festival from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day at Health Sciences Park, 26 South Dunlap in the Medical District. “We have been at the forefront in Memphis for 30 years in terms of celebrating Juneteenth,” said Dr. Telisa Franklin, the festival’s president. “Now that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, we’re excited that everybody gets a chance to celebrate.” The celebration began June 1 with the Juneteenth Family Empowerment Fair at Ed Rice Community Center…
By Wiley Henry MEMPHIS, TN – Black people don’t commit suicide. At least that was the consensus in the Black community, according to the Rev. Dianne M. Young, pastor of The Healing Center Full Gospel Baptist Church. Young and her late husband, Bishop William M. Young Sr., were confronted with this fallacy in 2002 when a distressed church member took her life on the grounds of the church. Her suicide devastated the Youngs. “We were already counseling and working with people,” she said, when the unthinkable happened. In 2003, they founded the “National Suicide and the Black Church Conference.” This…
By Wiley Henry MEMPHIS, TN — Dr. Raymond Winbush is quite candid and matter of fact when he talks about the plight of African Americans, the horrors of the slave trade in America, and the case for reparations. He’ll seize the opportunity to expound on those topics and others when he keynotes the 30th Anniversary Juneteenth Freedom Luncheon on June 15, 11:30 a.m., at the Holiday Inn University of Memphis, 3700 Central Ave. A reputed scholar, activist, research professor and director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University (MSU) in Baltimore, Md., Dr. Winbush’s visit is being…
By Wiley Henry MEMPHIS, TN — After a clarion was sounded for a select group of Black men to coalesce around the idea of learning and preserving the rich history of their community, 10 answered the call. The group met May 9 at the Sugar Hill Museum, a small building on Walker Avenue housing a photographic collection of Black history-makers from eras past and present, courtesy of the museum’s proprietor, Charles Todd. It came as no surprise that four former members of The Invaders, a 1960s Black power group, were present, including a fifth Invader, who identified himself as one…
By Wiley Henry MEMPHIS, TN — The tragic death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers provided the impetus for a panel discussion on overzealous policing and accountability on March 30 at the National Civil Rights Museum. Moderated by MSNBC’s Joy Reid, a political analyst, and the host of “The Reid Out,” the panelists kicked off the first of a four-part national convening entitled “The Reckoning, The Resolve, The Restoration, and The Resilience.” Panelists Benjamin Crump, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, Cheryl Dorsey, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, and Alex S. Vitale addressed “The Reckoning,” a focus on community…
By Wiley Henry MEMPHIS, TN — On Aug. 26, 1969, an angry white mob in Forrest City, Ark., tried to beat the life out of Min. Suhkara A. Yahweh while leading a peaceful “Walk Against Fear” from West Memphis to Little Rock, Ark. He told the story many times and marked the 50th anniversary of his near-death experience after returning to Forrest City to keynote a Civil Rights Commemoration Program on Aug. 17, 2019. Yahweh died March 25 at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis after a brief illness. He was 84. Wherever there was injustice and racial upheaval, Yahweh was…
By Wiley Henry MEMPHIS, TN — Candidates vying for the office of Memphis mayor, city court clerk and all 13 city council districts will stump for votes leading up to the Memphis Municipal Election on Oct. 5. Dr. Carnita Atwater, however, is miffed with the election process and the two-party system. On March 5, she organized a “political consortium” at The Kukutanna African American History and Cultural Museum in North Memphis to discuss “the root issues of our democracy.” Much to Atwater’s chagrin, the consortium drew a sparse crowd of 30 people to the first public meeting to discuss the…
By Wiley Henry MEMPHIS, TN — The Harriet Performing Arts Center is home to the Young Actors Guild (YAG) of Memphis. On Feb. 19, the day YAG was born 32 years ago, Chrysti Chandler will celebrate the art center’s second grand opening at 3 p.m. Located at 2788 Lamar Ave. and Pendleton Street in the historic Orange Mound/Bethel Grove community, this grand opening completes the second round of renovations to the Harriet, which had been an old vacant fire station that Chandler purchased in 2019 from the City of Memphis for $1. “All we had to do was renovate it,”…
By Wiley Henry MEMPHIS, TN — The savage beatdown that five Black police officers inflicted upon Tyre Nichols during a purported traffic stop, set off a powder keg of raw emotions and a call for change at the Memphis Police Department. When the city of Memphis released the video on Jan. 27, Bianca Baker said she wept. Then anger welled up in her and intensified. “You wouldn’t treat a dog the way they treated this man,” she said. “I have sons. What got me was when he called out for his mother.” For Baker, the video was quite excruciating to…