illustration by Chris Honeysuckle Ellis
In early April I glanced at the television and saw Willie Herenton. I assumed he was being interviewed in connection with the 50th anniversary of the Martin Luther King assassination. Wrong. He was announcing that he plans to run for mayor in 2019.
Which is nuts, of course. Herenton was mayor for 17 years — about two terms too long — before deciding to resign during his fifth term. Now he wants back in. You don’t run for the job you quit, at least not while people still remember who you are.
I watched the mayor, now 78 years old, talk about himself and about Memphis, where he has lived all his life. I remembered covering him as a reporter. I remembered him winning that thrilling election in 1991 by 142 votes. I remembered he got more than 122,000 votes — nearly three times as many as the current mayor — and more votes than were gathered by all the candidates in the 2015 election put together. In fact, the guy Herenton beat in 1991, Dick Hackett, also got more than 122,000 votes.
Those were the days when most people actually voted in local elections. Voting. What a concept.
Still, it was crazy seeing Herenton talk about running again.
Then again, was it any crazier than the failed Tiger basketball coach, Tubby Smith, walking away with a severance package worth a few million dollars? Crazier than his successor, Penny Hardaway, being lauded for taking the same job for the bargain price of a couple million? Or the Grizzlies trying to lose games while still charging people good money for tickets?
Any crazier than “experts” in the sports biz swallowing our NBA team’s disgraceful race to the bottom, and even promoting it as something suspenseful and honorable? Crazier than the lack of a credible, local daily media outlet that knows how to spell and connect dots and explain something without resorting to “5 Things We Know” click bait and leftovers from the Gannett national news network?
Crazier than a city that pays an activist to come here and tell the world that Memphis has not made progress in race relations or justice since 1968? Or another local activist who castigates the current Loeb brothers in The New York Times for something the uncle they barely knew did 50 years ago? Or the parachute pundits from near and far who used the anniversary to promote their condescending ignorance? Or the friends and family of Dr. King who still believe the crackpot theory that James Earl Ray did not kill him?
No, I don’t think Willie Herenton will be mayor of Memphis again, and actually, I’m not sure he’ll follow through on his promise to run. I don’t see him really caring one way or another about, say, the parking policy on the Greensward or the fate of the Mid-South Coliseum. And he more or less squandered whatever was left of his political capital in 2010 when he ran for the Democratic nomination for Congress and got thumped nearly four to one by Steve Cohen.
Herenton is a big complicated man with big ideas who has led a big Memphis life from the projects to segregated Booker T. Washington High School to LeMoyne-Owen to the school superintendent’s job to mayor. The chase, the challenge, the spotlight, and the confrontations with the media and council members were the things he’s always loved about public life. There was never any “a spokesman replied in an email” from him. He would call you up or call you out.
No progress in Memphis since 1968? I would have loved to see the parachute pundits and the former Memphis Invaders tell that to the man who won that 1991 election and was mayor of the city for 17 years. He sees Memphis, with all its faults, as a good place to live and work, a place that is more than its sports teams, food courts, fads, and historic anniversaries. In his first three terms, at least, he represented a Memphis that was in many ways a better, more engaged, and more interesting place than it was in 1968.
So it was kind of nice seeing Willie Herenton in the news again, even if he changes his mind about running. The election of 1991 was the most important event in Memphis history since April of 1968. Let the pundits and activists chew on that.
