December 12, 2002

"City Trilogy Part 2, Memphis, TN"

CityVoices readers,

Greetings as we approach this Christmas season! I trust that you are enjoying God’s richness in city ministry, even as you enable many others to experience the wonder of the Gospel during this season. This edition of CityVoices, second in our trilogy of city profiles, focuses on Memphis – soul of the mid-south.

Some of you have been inquiring about a print version of CityVoices. As I have told many, I would like to be providing a year-end edition in print format as we intended earlier this year. This tough year, culminating in December’s high-water mark of bad economic news nationwide, is indicative of what CityVoices has gone through. Pray for us, as we are still scrambling to pay off last summer’s printing bills. Until we find ourselves in much better economic position, we will rely on the much greater economy (and flexibility) that email versions provide.

Grace and peace, this holiday season,

Roger Johnson, Editor – CityVoices

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Where Americans Live: Small, Medium and Mega-Sized Cities

Not much of America’s population can any longer be found in municipalities of fewer than 100,000 people. Let’s face it. If we’re talking city in the twenty-first century, we’re now talking about a place that’s got energy for commerce and education, lots of cultures and language groups (and room for growth in that mix), more than its share of confusion and problems, and well in excess of 100,000 people. If it doesn’t have that kind of critical mass, it is ceasing to be a city rather than growing as a city (or simply a "museum piece" of it’s former self).

The current trilogy of CityVoices editions profiles three very different-sized American cities: Fort Wayne, Indiana (with just over 205,000 citizens, ranks 84th nationally), Memphis, Tennessee (with its 650,000 people citywide, ranks 18th), and Los Angeles with a municipal population of 3,694,000 ranks second only to New York City throughout the entire United States. Metro areas certainly encompass far more people for each one of these cities, with greater Los Angeles accounting for several "nations" within its roughly defined borders.

The point in our comparison and contrast is that there are many ways to live within urban American at the beginning of this century. Some cities face backward, some fast-forward, some are traditional, some are a global urban village, barely looking like last century’s America at all!

It’s an exciting time to be part of our nation’s cities! There seems to be a place for everyone, and there’s a place for nearly every kind of church. Just watch with wonderment, as Christ’s mission gets carried out in amazing ways!

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Memphis in Brief –

Memphis is the nation’s 18th largest city (over 650,000 people) and 44th largest metropolitan area with well over a million people within its metro region.

The Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce has appropriately dubbed Memphis "a work in progress." From the rejuvenation of downtown to the acquisition of a NBA basketball team, signs point to progress in the making of Memphis, again among the top 20 cities in America.

Seven Fortune 500 companies and six Forbes 500 companies are headquartered in Memphis.

Downtown – This area of Memphis posted a population growth rate of 18 percent from 1990 to 2000, placing it among the fastest-growing downtowns of any city in America.

Overlooking the banks of the Mississippi River, Downtown Memphis has welcomed more than $2.3 billion in private and public developments since 1999. Bolstered by strategically allocated public funds plus tax abatements and development loans, Downtown Memphis is now comprised of approximately 80,000 workers, 3,700 businesses and 27 percent of the city's office market. More than 21,000 people call Downtown home and 6 million tourists visit its attractions yearly.

Economic development – In 2001, more than 6,200 new jobs were created when 187 major companies announced relocations to Memphis. These projects involved $1.77 billion in new private capital investment.

By 2005, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital will complete a $1 billion expansion that will double the facility's size.

During the last three years, Memphis had the highest rate of high-tech start-ups among the nation's 60 largest metro areas.

Metro/County make-up – Memphis' Metropolitan Statistical Area consists of five counties in three states: Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. Located in Shelby County, the city's population tops 653,507 people within 772 square miles. More than one million live within the county's boundaries.

Shelby County is populated by 47.3 percent white residents, 48.6 percent African American residents, 4 percent Asian/Pacific Island, Hispanic and others.

The average annual salary per household in the county is slightly higher than $56,000.

Nearly 30 percent of the adult population is employed in service-oriented positions. The retail industry employs 18 percent of the county's workers, followed by government (14 percent), trans/communications (12 percent) and manufacturing (11 percent).

Nearly half of the county's adult population has attended college; nearly 19 percent earned a four-year college degree and 74 percent graduated high school.

Memphians know how to play. From the success story of Beale Street to the Redbirds on the diamond and the Grizzlies on the hardwood, the business of leisure is a serious topic in this city.

Decades have passed since Elvis kicked in Rock 'n Roll's door, but his presence is felt even now as thousands pay homage yearly to his memory at his Graceland home.

The same respect holds true for late musician W.C. Handy, whose statue in the park that bears his name overlooks the resurgence of the Blues on Beale Street. Innovative businessmen, entrepreneurs and visionaries with the Beale Street Merchants Association are introducing new generations of sightseers and music-lovers to the music born in the Mississippi Delta.

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Anthony Wood and Memphis Urban Ministry

Since 1992, Anthony Wood and his wife, Candi, have been intensely involved in the work of Memphis Urban Ministry (MUM): first in planting the Downtown Church in Memphis, then in transferring leadership of that ministry to Jeff Matthews, and now in coordinating a growing network of half a dozen Church of Christ congregations throughout the Memphis region.

It’s a strategy that says city church planting is every bit as possible as church planting anywhere else in America. Tough? Sure it’s tough! Just ask Anthony. It’s certainly not without its disappointments and setbacks at times. And sometimes, the urban church planter seems to be left without all the necessary resources that someone might have in a more "well-resourced" community.

But more than a decade of ministry in one of America’s toughest cities has left Anthony Wood anything but discouraged. Rather, is seems that the vision and strategy for Memphis Urban Ministries is just now coming together in full force. Anthony encourages believers to join together in:

Training indigenous leaders in the city; calling Christians to relocate into the city; correcting poor attitudes about the poor. Outcast, and foreigner; a greater love for children in the city; bringing all nations into one church; prophetic ministry that makes a difference; holding the gift of life in our hands, and sharing it – that’s Memphis Urban Ministries’ vision for the city. MUM believes that Christians must choose to live in the city to model God’s love in neighborhoods ruled by Satan. MUM wants to be a bridge for reconciling all peoples into God’s church through evangelism, church planting, and community development. MUM wants to connect city churches with suburban / rural churches to partner in making Memphis his city. Won’t you partner with us as we join God where he is, in the city?

"Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings." Isaiah 58: 12

Contact: Anthony Wood, Memphis Urban Ministries, 443 S. Highland Street, Memphis, TN 38111, (901) 312-3486, awood@highlandcc.org

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Chris Maudlin, preacher, Wonder City Church of Christ, West Memphis

(Chris Maudlin came from rural New Mexico to study and then minister in one of the region’s neediest locations, West Memphis. A thriving city unto itself, Chris is helping his young congregation build a whole new identity as they look to for new power in their old town on the western banks of the Mississippi River. Strength for the journey comes through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit working through Chris and his people.)

Chris, how many people live in mobile homes here in West Memphis?

I would say probably about 4,000 to 5,000 people. (That’s out of 30,000 total population.) It’s a very racially divided town. When I moved here in 1994 I had a mission-minded deacon in our sponsoring church who told me not to live east of Missouri Street (where the parenting church is located). That’s just how most everybody thinks here. It’s white flight all over.

In the 1920 and 30s West Memphis, because of the "rail head" into Memphis, was a booming town. It grew by 300 or 400 percent. That’s a nickname that stuck, "the wonder city" in the Wonder State, Arkansas. It means even more in the black community where there are several institutions still carrying that name: Wonder City High School, Wonder City Boys Club, etc. It has a good historical foundation, and we hope to make more of it in the future. God is doing "wonders" in a new century!

Once of the reasons we’re interested in economic development is because when you leave our neighborhood here (Courtyard Apartments), the biggest housing development in West Memphis, every direction you go, every business is owned by someone who does not even live in West Memphis any longer.

There’s been a lot of crime here. A few years ago half of these places were boarded up, but as you can see, things have improved a lot. Most people live here at Courtyard Apartments with deep subsidies, paying less than $100 per month. Now we’ve been totally unsuccessful at reaching the poorer white families in the trailer park. When we do prayer walks, they won’t even look at us. Again, businesses are owned entirely by outsiders. They’re robbing the neighborhood of its economic base. We really want to make a change in that. We want to keep that dollar circulating among our people in this neighborhood. And we also want to lead our people to home ownership. As I understand poverty that’s one of the major problems, because you keep spending all your money on rent.

Chris, tell us what we’re seeing right here on the main street in West Memphis?

All this area is African-American based. The mayor in town is very big on revitalizing the east end of town. They’ve already started revitalizing the first phase with streetlights and sidewalks. Too much of our tax base has always been spent across the river in Memphis. We’ve got to start changing that.

Chris, where does West Memphis, and your church, fit into this whole urban milieu of the Memphis urban area?

By way of background, my wife and I started our work as interns at the "Downtown Church" in Memphis, and then we went through the apprenticeship program with the hopes of starting a church in West Memphis. So, to make the comparison, I’d have to say that one of the differences is that we don’t have near as many people here in West Memphis. The Frayser neighborhood (in Memphis) has 55,000 and the whole city of West Memphis has only 30,000. But, the SE section of West Memphis has one-third of our county’s population but two-thirds of our county’s poverty. It’s a classic urban situation because in most urban areas there’s a rural sub-culture.

Contact: Chris Maudlin, Wonder City Church of Christ, 1600 North Missouri, West Memphis, AR, 72301, chris@wondercity.org

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Dr. Evertt Huffard, Dean of the Harding University Graduate School of Religion

(Due to his position on the faculty at Harding Graduate School, Evertt Huffard has emerged as the strongest voice for a theology of urban missions within the Churches of Christ in Memphis, and one of the strongest voices for urban missions nationally. From a rural background, Huffard first learned about cities in East Los Angeles, and has since helped many more young ministers gain a foothold in urban America.)

Evertt, you’re the theologian of urban mission here in Memphis, is that fair to say?

A strategist of mission, perhaps. I grew up on the mission field, and always was in pretty much a rural environment. Dad was a rural preacher. When I went to Fuller Seminary, I worked in an inner city ministry there, not by choice. It was just a dying downtown church in East LA. So that was my urbanization. Not a single Hispanic attending that congregation then, but in five years time they became the largest Hispanic congregation in our Churches of Christ.

So when I came to Memphis, I had this passion for doing ministry in the city. I had known Harold Shank, already ministering here in Memphis, who had this same awareness for city ministry. We began to ask, "What difference can Highland Street Church make?" So Harding University Graduate School provided the training and manpower, and Harold provided the vision and resources and volunteers (from the church side) and it was kind a team effort that started. We did two Saturday seminars to get the vision out. Some hundred people showed up.

Then we really developed a strategy of doing church planting as the ministry. Meeting wholistic needs, working with children, working with adults, transforming the world of children. I don’t know any way else that can be done without the church, anywhere in the world, and the poor need a church. I think we were able to try to develop a strategy based on that. But to do it requires training. You’re heart always goes in that direction, but you need a rudder, and a philosophy behind what you are doing. We were able to do that in a couple of ways.

One, for eight years we’ve taught a course on urban ministry at the Harding Graduate School. My first sabbatical I spent my whole time studying urban ministry, because I had not had any training in urban ministry.

And it has generated an interest in students at the Graduate School. Three of the last four student association presidents were inner city ministers. They have become spiritual forces on campus.

Over the past five years we’ve seen an emergence of students who have been in two-year urban apprenticeships and are now going full-time. They are now turning around and apprenticing others in urban ministry. Contact: Dr. Evertt Huffard, Harding University Graduate School of Religion, 1000 Cherry Road, Memphis, TN 38117, dean@hugsr.edu

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Harold Shank, preacher, Highland Street Church of Christ, Memphis, TN

(Harold Shank ministers at the Highland Street Church of Christ in Memphis, a "flagship" of sorts for Memphis Urban Ministries. His years of service at Highland Street have been marked by a strong working relationship with the Harding University Graduate School, a passion for reaching Memphis’ school children with the gospel and a genuine commitment to the poorest communities of the city.)

Harold, tell me a little bit about your work here at Highland Street Church.

Highland Street Church of Christ started over 75 years ago as a church plant in the suburbs. Today we’re close to the geographic core of Memphis. We feel an increasing responsibility to the urban community, living in one of America’s poorest cities. How do we make a difference? We’ve just tried to turn our heart toward the city, and focus on children, the poor, and on the race issue. We’ve been able to work together with some 40 other Churches of Christ in Memphis on these issues. So, there’s a strong sense here in the congregation rank and file that that’s part of our mission.

We do some relief work. We have a school store, started back in 1990. We hand out school supplies to the children. We’ve bought $28,000 worth of school supplies this year, for distribution to kids this year. When we do this, we’re handing out grace and mercy, trying to make the children feel that there’s someone in the community who cares about them. The Memphis City Schools are one of the largest school systems in the country with 113,000 students in 117 schools. We’re trying to be a voice in the community saying that children are important.

We have a situation in our community where we’re spending $250 million on an arena for million dollar salaried basketball players to play. We’re not saying that basketball is wrong. We’re simply saying that there needs to be more attention paid to children.

We struggle with how to engage in some sort of meaningful relationship with these children, because economically, we’re an upper class white church. Most of the children who come are poor Asian, Hispanic or African American, from many dysfunctional homes. So it’s really hard to connect. We’ve tried a number of different things in various years with our School Store. This year we’re asking the parents and guardians if they go to church or not. And then we’re asking them if they would be interested in having one of our adults be a prayer partner for their child.

We’re also in the process of starting a second Sunday school, a "remedial Sunday school" – if you will. When you put socially affluent kids together with dysfunctional kids, it doesn’t work very well. So we’ve started a "merge lane" into quality Christian education for all of our children.

Contact: Harold Shank, Highland Street Church of Christ, 443 S. Highland Street, Memphis, TN 38111, (901) 458-3335, hshank@highlandcc.org

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Rev. Freddie Moore, pastor, Holy Community Church; and Ms. Amy Moritz, director, The Uptown Alliance

(In many ways, Freddie Moore looks and sounds like a traditional Methodist in a town where Methodist roots run deep. But that’s about where the traditional approach ends for his ministry at Holy Community Church on Memphis’ near north side. Rev. Moore’s passion is for the city’s poor, whom he invites to "come as you are and be a part of God’s change in the area." With programs directed towards all populations of need, Moore has brought on Amy Moritz to direct the Uptown Alliance, an advocate agency in the larger public arena.)

Rev. Moore, how do you look on your own city, and how do you think others see their own city of Memphis?

(Rev. Freddie Moore) I would always like to think of Memphis as "the Bible Belt city." I think of it as a slow, family kind of city, compared to other cities. I went to school in Atlanta, where it was a much faster paced city. Now, we’re moving at a faster pace here in Memphis, and pretty soon we’ll be catching up with places like Atlanta. But Memphis is a good, family-paced city.

(Amy Moritz) I would say that Memphis’ larger identity from the church perspective is fairly evangelical, and I have lived in several other cities. As far as larger identity, I would say we are on the verge of moving from that slow paced city to kind of a world-class city, looking to Atlanta as a model, but planning to even surpass that.

Amy , help me understand your work with the Uptown Alliance. It’s name and its mission, stemming from the Holy Community Church?

(Moritz) The Uptown Alliance formed just over a year ago when Rev. Freddie Moore called together a group of Methodists, some clergy, some laypeople, trying to gain support from the other churches in trying to be present in what we call the Uptown Community, especially as changes are planned for this part of Memphis. Our mission is to be a partner and advocate for the low income people in the community, so that other forces don’t simply take over.

(Moore) We want to make sure that the church is involved in this whole process, and that the community’s seniors are not left out. We want to make sure that there are jobs ahead. We hope that we can bring about a change in economics for that part of the city.

Amy, what are the successes that are encouraging you most about what you are doing?

(Moritz) What’s encouraging to me is the commitment of about a dozen of us that meet together on a regular basis. We are very encouraged by the way the City of Memphis is receiving what we’ve presented to them as far as what we want to be about in our community. I think that that’s an incredible opportunity for the church to be a partner in what happens, rather than to totally separated from the state.

Once you accomplish all you can with the city, what goals then?

(Moritz) We actually have several other priorities: property management, senior housing, community land trusts and education and employment.

Pastor Moore, what is it that your church is doing best that other churches aren’t doing downtown?

(Moore) We relate well to the "least of these." I preach in street clothes, not robes. People along the street tell me, "Pastor, we can relate to you, because you are not ‘up there.’" I didn’t even move to the pulpit until I had a hundred folk to preach to. I stayed on the floor, in a very friendly manner.

Contact: Rev. Freddie Moore, The Holy Community Church, 602 Looney Avenue, Memphis, TN 38101, (901) 523-2485, flapjmoore@worldnet.att.net

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Ron Cook, preacher, Frayser Mission Church

(Ron Cook serves at the Frayser Mission Church, an outreach of Memphis Urban Ministries aimed specifically toward ministry in the city’s northside Frayser community. With his training in urban mission and ministry at Harding University Graduate School in Memphis, Ron Cook and his wife, Ann, have prepared specifically for this type and place of ministry with the Church of Christ.)

Ron, give us some background on what’s happened lately in the Frayser community.

In the past twenty years, Frayser has changed from a blue-collar white neighborhood to a working class and welfare neighborhood, 95 percent black. The remaining white population is mainly elderly. That’s been the result of three primary factors.

One is political representation; it’s been very poor historically. Second, in the early 70s, desegregation, mandated by the courts, prompted the blue-collar white kids who lived in Frayser to go south to a predominantly black school. The whites didn’t like that, so they either started private religious schools of their own, or moved out.

A third factor that caused change was the re-location of two major employers, Firestone and International Harvestor. Their plants in that area closed within just a couple years, and literally thousands of jobs were brought to a screeching halt.

Also, there’s a new approach to public housing in Memphis. Frayser is one of a few neighborhoods in Memphis that is receiving all the new public housing residents. They are being moved out of the old public housing downtown, where housing is being renovated and /or torn down.

Back in the 70s Frayser began allowing large apartment complexes to be built in the middle of single family neighborhoods. Now, those complexes are housing families that used to be in public housing projects downtown. In some cases it works well, but in other cases it doesn’t. There are a lot of subsidized single family dwellings these days in Frayser. These are the people we’re trying to reach.

My wife, Ann, grew up in Frayser when it was a white, middle-class neighborhood. We met at the university over in Arkansas. Over time, God has put this on our hearts, and made it possible for us to start the church here in Frayser. We’ve been here about five-and-a-half years now. We’ve been trying to reach the poorest of the poor -- those in subsidized housing.

Most of the people we reach are people who have never been with the Lord, never been in church, have little understanding of the Bible, hard living kind of folk. Or they’ve been in church as a young person, and they’ve left the Lord and never been back. We’re reaching people with a lot of addictions, the chronically unemployed. And we’re taking a long view to raise up leaders for that community of faith. We average 80 or 85 in attendance each week.

We started out as a church, not a children’s ministry. But God has shown us that we need to grow our ministry to meet the needs of children and youth.

We’ve really tried to let God grow us in a couple areas. My wife, Ann, is a registered nurse, how can her gifts in the health arena be used?

The other area we’ve tried to grow in is trying to find curriculum that is educationally and culturally appropriate for our kids at all ages: the youngest up to teens. Another challenge we face is simply the lack of leadership. We’re working with first-generation Christians, like every missionary deals with. So that is a huge challenge!

A third challenge in Frayser is that we’re trying to be a neighborhood church. But our people have moved around and we spend hours picking up people for worship each Sunday. Just logistics is a huge issue. Our own worship location has moved four times in five years.

Contact: Ron Cook, Frayser Mission Church, c/o Memphis Urban Ministries, 443 S. Highland Street, Memphis, TN 38111, (901) 372-3327, rcook@highlandcc.org

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Lewie Polk, vice-president, Memphis Leadership Foundation

(Lewie Polk serves as vice-president of the Memphis Leadership Foundation, an umbrella ministry that has existed in Memphis since the mid 80’s to stand alongside existing city ministries and churches helping accomplish God’s work in creative ways. Originally founded by the initiative of Larry Lloyd and Howard Eddings, along with a committee of active Memphis business, church and community representatives, the Memphis Leadership Foundation has grown to become an excellent example of what an urban leadership foundation can accomplish in a city of its size.)

Lewie, how has the city changed since you’ve been working full-time with Memphis Leadership Foundation?

The bad news is that I’m much more aware of the hurts and the tough parts of the city. I grew up here, in east Memphis. It’s not very far out now, but it was then. I attended Second Presbyterian Church at Poplar and Goodwin, a church with a large campus. As a kid, that’s about as far east as I went. Memphis was much more neighborhood centered then. As a young adult I was a teacher, and I saw kids having problems, extreme difficulty in finding self-worth. I became keenly aware of the lack of guidance and male role models many of them had.

In the last few years, I’ve now observed greater involvement on the part of the people in our churches. Back in the 60s at Second Presbyterian, I never heard that there were problems in Memphis, Tennessee. The notion of mission work inside the city was something I had no recollection of growing up. Now, Second Presbyterian is very much committed to city mission work with its money, interest and most of all – their people’s time.

Identity-wise, how does Memphis look to you now?

As a life-long Memphian, and as somebody who fully anticipates living the rest of his life here, we are dramatically polarized mostly along racial lines. It appears that it’s been eased a little bit. We have an African American mayor, and African Americans in all major city and county offices. And while it’s changed dramatically, I still see the polarization and hurt over it.

Geographically, the inner part of the city is much more alive than it was twenty years ago. There’s residential development; there’s commercial development. There are public venues, the Pyramid, they are building a new arena for the NBA team, a first-class AAA ballpark is built, non-of which was around even ten years ago. All of which is a significant and good change for the city. People are willing to go downtown for entertainment. There’s a lot of life and traffic here in Memphis!

I’d visited other cities and I knew about "covered sidewalks" (for construction) elsewhere, but this is the first time I’d seen covered sidewalks in Memphis! It’s an inconvenience, but the more the merrier!

Let’s think ten years from now, what kind of city will Memphis be?

Major overhauls of the Convention Center will soon be complete, as well as a house for the Memphis Symphony. The NBA (and its new arena for the Memphis Grizzlies) has been a great source of public discussion, debate, rejoicing, anger; it’s all mixed up. A lot of people have very strong opinions on this issue. We live in a state that just came through a very painful discussion about how state government is funded. We’re one of the very few states that do not have a state income tax. (At this past 4th of July, we actually closed down all but essential state services for a short time.)

Given this, what is the mission of the Memphis Leadership Foundation?

The principles around which we organize remain unchanged. We want to come beside existing ministries in the middle part of the city to assist them in any way that we can. Ministries that are evangelical, wholistic and compassionate. We want to create ministry where there is a need. We serve as a conduit between believers in a community of resource with those in a community of need. We want to train and equip and support indigenous leadership wherever possible. I think that remains our mission.

How long have you been at it? What’s gone right?

Hopefully, we’ve stayed true to those goals. Geographically, West Memphis is right across that bridge. There are several "bedroom communities" around us. We don’t operate in those places, except with a very, very few exceptions. We believe in this city. We’re not looking to become a regional center for ministry. We believe God has called us to Memphis, and we’ve found great partners in ministry here in Memphis.

Lewie, give me an example of one of Memphis Leadership’s programs where churches have gotten involved, that’s been particularly successful.

About ten years ago, we started a program called MARRS, Mediation And Restitution / Reconciliation Services. It’s designed to help kids who will upon the occasion of their first or second brush with the law, mediate their differences with their victim and come up with a way to fashion restitution. Of course, the overall goal is to help those kids somehow defeat the recidivism cycle that juvenile crime often develops into, where the crimes get more serious and more repetitious, and you have life-long criminals.

Christ United Methodist Church, which is a large east Memphis congregation, came beside us at that time and became our partner with this program, lending us office space, staff, counselors and funding. In fact, sometimes Christ United Methodist considers MARRS a program of theirs, and that’s okay. Some of their people have even been trained as volunteer mediators working in the process. Christ Methodist’s members sitting on the advisory board for MARRS have been very important to us. The whole thing is a great marriage between their church and our organization.

Have you ever tried to estimate how many people Memphis Leadership Foundation is serving at any one time?

A significant responsibility I’ve got is to create some tools to do just that. And it’s complicated because the term Memphis Leadership Foundation can be used to describe a whole bunch of different circles. You can draw lines that are very far flung, as opposed to the very tight core that works right here with the Memphis Leadership Foundation.

The delightful barrier to it all is that when our people wake up each day that not motivated by keeping records, they’re motivated by serving people.

FedEx?? Are they of help to people right here at home in Memphis?

As a "corporate citizen" FedEx is a very responsible one. I’m sure they get fifteen more calls or requests than they can respond to. They have not been on the forefront of any major issue. But they have done their part continually.

Contact: Lewie Polk, Memphis Leadership Foundation, 1548 Poplar Avenue, Memphis TN 38104, (901) 729-2931, lewiepolk@mlfonline.org

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