This horror present of a 12 months challenged us on each entrance. Discovering methods to are inclined to our households and ourselves within the midst of an awesome world well being and financial disaster wasn’t all the time profitable in 2020. From lack of earnings to lack of connection and lack of life, the 12 months’s penalties weren’t inevitable or deserved. Nonetheless, hope emerged from this metropolis’s folks.
At MLK50, considered one of our core missions, bearing witness, was challenged by this pandemic. We needed to find out about working in the community safely to attenuate threat for all. We took this second to consider how images can be utilized as a tool for liberation, fairly than one of surveillance. These classes are mirrored on this depiction of 2020.
By telling the story of this 12 months by way of photographs of the folks on the heart, we expect there may be some hope for a greater Memphis in 2021.
The Marchers
It looks like the morning of each MLK Day march is met with frost on the grass on the nook of North Foremost and A.W. Willis, the place of us collect earlier than setting off on their annual route. The chilly creeps underneath jackets however doesn’t deter the teams of oldsters who’ve made the stroll from the North Foremost Memphis Space Transit Authority terminal to the Nationwide Civil Rights Museum. Although 2021 may be the primary 12 months in additional than three a long time that the march might not occur, the dedication that has carried this ritual this far is certain to not fade.
The Lovers
Our collection throughout Black Historical past Month highlighted the tales of 4 {couples}. Our classes with Rev. Floridia Jackson and her wife Treace, in addition to Emma and Thomas Trass, served as tales of sweetness and perseverance.
The Staff
The disruption that the pandemic dropped at on a regular basis life was felt most sharply in Memphis by employees who had barely found out easy methods to survive in common occasions. A lot of them shared their tales in their very own phrases with us throughout our first-person essay collection. Learn a few of their tales right here: Frank Johnson; Lorin Vincent Haines; Eileen Castine; Epiphany Jones.
The Mourners
April 4th outdoors of the Nationwide Civil Rights Museum is a somber affair. Yearly, a big crowd gathers outdoors the balcony of the previous Lorraine Motel, the location of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assasination in 1968, to pay respects with an intentional second of silence. However 2020 introduced a special type of quiet to the location. Just a few folks have been there (together with a masked safety guard), and there was no formal program offered by the museum.
The Caregiver
Sepia Coleman is a house well being aide whose activism with the Battle For $15 motion put her on the forefront of conversations about residing wage reform. When the pandemic began, she wrote about the dangers she confronted as she discovered herself on the frontlines at work. Her life took a daunting flip when she contracted the virus, leading to excessive medical payments and little recourse or assist. By way of all of it, Coleman’s braveness in sharing her experiences reminded us how a lot is revealed about what wants to vary when tales heart the voices of employees.
The Mom
“Being pregnant is annoying,” Maya McKenzie wrote in a first-person essay for MLK50 just a few weeks earlier than delivering her daughter, Paz, this previous July. “Being pregnant throughout a pandemic is much more annoying. However being Black and pregnant throughout a pandemic and an rebellion is devastating.” Fortunately, McKenzie and her child made it by way of their birthing expertise safely.
The Dad and mom
Photographer Brandon Dill met and interviewed working dad and mom in Shelby County because the 2020-2021 college 12 months approached and the varsity district deliberated what all-virtual training would appear to be. What he discovered have been emotions of collective anxiousness within the house between wanting one of the best for kids and wanting to guard the household in opposition to a pandemic. A lot of the testimony was rooted in love and perseverance. Learn insights from the households right here: Part I; Part II
The Neighbors
Dill additionally shared a survey of ideas, worries, hopes and needs from of us in Orange Mound and Soulsville as a part of his photograph sales space challenge. See those images and words here.
The One-Man Voter Registration Marketing campaign
Reginald Upshaw arrange his voter registration sales space on an empty nook lot he owns within the Klondike-Smokey Metropolis space. He deliberate to arrange on the Fourth of July, however the smoke from fireworks throughout this 12 months’s celebrations made him wait till the following day. Whereas he solely logged single digit registration numbers, Upshaw thought of it a victory. “I used to be ecstatic,” he mentioned of the primary particular person he helped, “I took the man’s image. We took a selfie collectively. He informed me, ‘I had simply given up.’” He mentioned the work is essential to him as a result of it must be completed, “It’s a battle. I wouldn’t be in it if it wasn’t.”
The Fighters
As recommendation about social distancing and its function in decreasing the unfold of the pandemic was setting in, the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police occurred on Could 25, 2020, and folks poured into the streets. Floyd’s loss of life, caught on video, burst a dam of grief, anger and ache that flooded the streets of cities and cities internationally. People organized as safely as they may to talk out and declare a battle in opposition to anti-Blackness, misogyny and their systemic manifestations.
In Memphis, activists spent a lot of the summer season talking the names of Breonna Taylor, Darrius Stewart, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Oluwatoyin Salau and different lives lower brief because of racism’s attain into our methods. The fights proceed within the organizing of Memphians in opposition to threats that disproportionately have an effect on Blackpeople, such because the Byhalia Connection pipeline, which threatens the mostly-Black neighborhoods of southwest Memphis, and a gasoline station that was proposed within the Prospect Park neighborhood.
Wish to assist us hold reporting on poverty, energy and coverage? Assist journalism that continues the legacies of Ida B. Wells and Martin Luther King Jr. Donate to MLK50 today – your contribution (as much as $5,000) shall be doubled now by way of Dec. 31!
This story is dropped at you by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom centered on poverty, energy and coverage in Memphis. Assist unbiased journalism by making a tax-deductible donation right now. MLK50 can be supported by these beneficiant donors.
