Blog Post 5

For November 14, we were assigned to read Memphis Burning, an article written by Preston Lauterbach for the Places Journal. Lauterbach chronicles the history of housing for black folk in Memphis from the 1950s to until 2015. His main claim is the economic and social inequality that black people in Memphis face now is because of the degradation of housing options for black Memphians. He uses several examples of how Memphis, its municipal government and its residents, used violence, intimidation, and destruction to relegate black people in Memphis to enduring status of inequality. Lauterbach paints Crump’s reign as the as the catalyst for this housing inequality. During the 1930s, Crump cleared one of Memphis’ middle class black neighborhoods and replaced in with high density public housing. Lauterbach says, “Densifying an existing black neighborhood was a racist strategy to prevent African Americans from encroaching on predominantly white areas” (Lauterbach). However, government action was not the only tactic used to oppress black Memphians. White Memphians formed mobs to keep black families from buying homes in white neighborhoods. Lauterbach references a specific neighborhood in South Memphis on Olive Avenue. A bomb was placed in a home that a black family recently purchased. Lauterbach says, “soon after they moved in, white neighbors formed a violent, reactionary mob, shouting epithets at the new residents, patrolling the streets and taking down For Sale signs. They threatened to tar and feather homeowners who sold to black buyers. ‘When they see a house being shown, they round up the mob,’ said Mrs. L.C. Hauser, a white resident of East Olive. ‘It’s like the Paul Revere signal’”(Lauterbach). To finalize the status of inequality for black folk in Memphis, the city burned down the Churches’ family home. To black Memphians, this home represented economic success, political prowess, and social equality. Memphis was hosting a fire safety convention and to demonstrate the “new, efficient, fog nozzle hire hose, the city of Memphis authorized the convention to burn down the Churches’ family home (Lauterbach). In response to this event, Lester Lynom, a black Memphian, said that the burning of the home was “almost a lynching of the Negroes of Memphis” (Lauterbach). Through this act of arson, Lauterbach says that “Boss Crump converted one of the black community’s greatest strengths into a monument to inequality” (Lauterbach).

Because the legacy of Boss Crump’s actions still exists today, what will it take to create a status of housing equality between black and white Memphians?

Link to article: https://placesjournal.org/article/memphis-burning/