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Shelby County’s community services director has a plan to address gun violence
Sandy Bromley came to Memphis nearly seven years ago to lead the Crime Victims and Rape Crisis Center, a county-run department that serves nearly 4,000 crime victims every year. In May, she was tapped to oversee the county’s division of community services, a vast portfolio that includes pretrial services, the aging commission and behavioral health, among other services.
Memphis needs to end HIV criminalization to achieve justice and promote public health
Ceasing enforcement of the aggravated prostitution statute in Shelby County is an overdue step in ending the criminalization of people living with HIV, especially Black women living with HIV in Memphis, and advancing public health. Prosecutors in Shelby County agreed with the U.S. Department of Justice to stop singling out...
After victory, what’s next for the Memphis Tenants Union?
In March, Joyce Warren smoked a cigarette outside Memphis Towers, her home for more than 10 years. She noticed William Tuggle walk out the front doors of the building, hollering in excitement. As members of the Memphis Tenants Union, Warren and Tuggle had been working together for the prior two years to force their landlord, The Millennia Cos., to improve the conditions in the building or sell it.
Rebecca Cadenhead joins MLK50 as youth life and justice reporter
We’re excited to announce that we’ve added Rebecca Cadenhead to our reporting team. Cadenhead, who started July 1, will write stories about youth life and justice for MLK50. She comes to us via Report for America, the national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. She studied...
The community is working on the city’s gun problems even when the legislature isn’t
What if we thought of firearm injuries as a disease in need of an intervention — or a cure?. That’s the idea researchers, community violence advocates and medical professionals have been asking for years now as the number of firearm-related injuries continues to grow. Any time there’s a threat to human life, public health professionals have tried to figure out what could be done to intervene.
State Sen. Taylor is seeking to oust DA Mulroy. The move is rooted in misinformation
State Sen. Brent Taylor took his ongoing criticism of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy a step further last month, saying he plans to file a resolution allowing the Tennessee General Assembly to vote on ousting the district attorney. In a news conference held June 17, Taylor would not give...
Low-income Memphians now have two options for legal aid
After losing its largest funder, Memphis Area Legal Services has named a new CEO, who says the organization will continue to provide the same legal services to low-income Memphians it has for years. Meanwhile, West Tennessee Legal Services has begun offering similar services in the city, using the same funding...
‘Palestinian liberation isn’t a threat Jewish safety’
I never thought about Palestine. I never thought about Palestinian people. I never thought of Palestine in the same way people in the U.S. don’t think about Indigenous people, myself included. Until 10 years ago, I believed what I was taught about Palestinians, which is the same rhetoric of...
In shift, Community Foundation backs advocacy orgs with almost $2.4 million
The Community Foundation of Greater Memphis is going out on a limb, in hopes it leads to major, systems-level changes in the city. The foundation plans to give almost $2.4 million over the next five years to three organizations advocating for more equitable housing and criminal justice systems: The Greater Memphis Housing Justice Project, Just City and the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope.
Meet summer intern Kailan Dixon
We’re excited to announce another addition to our development team — at least temporarily. Kailan Dixon, a graduate student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has joined us as our first intern. During a 10-week stint this summer, she’ll support the development team with our first summer campaign, co-design a donor survey and use her strong communication skills to help develop digital assets for a range of projects.
Memphis needs affordable housing. But it’s gotten harder to build.
Pastor Clifford Causey says he was stirred by the Spirit to take a late-night drive through Parkway Village back in 2018. On it, he saw a faded for-sale sign sitting in the brush of a vacant property across from his small church on Mt. Moriah Road Extd. He called the number on the sign to express his interest despite his lack of funds. A few months later, the owner called back to offer him the land for free.
Donald Trump is a convicted felon. Should he be allowed to vote?
In Tennessee, the voices of Black communities have been systematically silenced through disenfranchisement, perpetuated by a white nationalist supermajority in Congress. Between 2008 and 2020, approximately 320,000 Black voters in Tennessee have been disenfranchised due to felony convictions. This oppressive tactic, rooted in historical racial injustice, continues to deprive marginalized...
They charged Frances Thompson with indecency when all she wanted to do was live a safe life
“Am I not a woman and a sister?” 19th century abolitionist slogan. Imagine walking through Downtown Memphis on a Monday morning, in the summer of 1876. The Civil War’s shadow still touches everything in sight. In a few months, a presidential election will bring the end of Reconstruction, that brief moment when many former slaves thought they might enter U.S. society on more equal terms.
Meet development manager Lyndsey Pender
We’re ecstatic to announce that native Memphian Lyndsey Pender has joined the MLK50 team as our development manager. Pender started last week and will be essential in improving our donor strategy as well as our grants management. Before joining MLK50, Pender served as senior donor experience research manager at...
Local immigrants fear impact of new state law, but say Young is listening
When a group of immigrant rights advocates walked through Cooper-Young on April 15 to protest a new state law, Memphis police responded by driving their vehicles into the crowd, sometimes coming within inches of marchers. Sirens blared in Spanish and English, saying, “You must leave the immediate vicinity,” and threatening,...
Some Baptist-Desoto patients go to jail to await mental health treatment
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Mississippi Today and co-published with the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, the Sun Herald and MLK50. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. When Sandy Jones’ 26-year-old daughter started...
Memphis’ unmet promise leaves Black burial sites in disarray
An empty Budweiser can was propped between the bottom edge of Walter “Furry” Lewis’ tombstone and bunches of tall, prickly sow-thistles that had begun to flower. Local lore has it that musicians and music lovers pilgrimage to this plot at historic Hollywood Cemetery to sip a little, then pour an honoring libation on soil that received the iconic bluesman’s remains after he died in 1981 at the age of 88.
Tennessee rep calls Memphis preemption bill worse than ‘overreach’
This story has been republished with permission from Tennessee Lookout. Read the original story here. A Memphis state representative is calling a preemption bill signed into law by the governor more than a case of “overreach” as it turns back efforts to stop “pretextual” traffic stops such as those that led to the 2023 death of motorist Tyre Nichols.
MLK50 moves to co-leadership model
It’s a transformative week at MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. As we reported today, our beloved founder Wendi C. Thomas is readying for a well-deserved sabbatical before transitioning back into the newsroom as an investigative editor. The MLK50 team has spent the last four years planning and building for this...
Wendi C. Thomas, founder of MLK50, to return to investigative work
When Wendi C. Thomas launched MLK50: Justice Through Journalism in 2017, she had a clear vision for what she wanted to do: journalism that explored the intersection of poverty, power and public policy in Memphis and changed lives. The 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 2018 provided obvious context for the kind of reporting Thomas knew was necessary.
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