Following the creation of the Federal Housing Administration in 1934, Memphis was the second city in the United States to establish a local housing authority, the Memphis Housing Authority in 1935. Built in 1938, the city’s first two public housing ventures were Dixie Homes, for Black Memphians, and Lauderdale Courts, the former home of a young Elvis Presley, for whites. With segregation still the law of the land at the time, the expectation was that the communities served by the two projects would not meet.
Decades later, in the early 1980s, one young resident of Dixie Homes, Cornelius Sanders, would begin a friendship with his white basketball coach that crossed that seemingly inviolable racial boundary line. Sanders and his one-time coach, Ramsay Clark, shared a friendship that began on the courts of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Memphis and has, for more than 50 years, had far more impact off the court. The two Memphians tell their story — one of friendship, faith, mentorship, and basketball — in the newly released Color Blind (WestBow Press).
The book is a meditation on responsibility and community-building, co-authored by two men who met in their respective youth and young manhood, bonded over basketball, and continued to lead lives defined by service. Clark, 69, began working on Color Blind after retiring from a career in healthcare sales, with seven years spent as the director of development for the Memphis Leadership Foundation. Sanders, now 61, is president of the Promise Development Corporation, offering housing, economic development, and supportive services.
“I grew up in a housing project and I remember when my mom bought a duplex,” he says. “I was 12 years old and still remember the feelings I had when we unloaded the furniture and moved in. I want to replicate that many, many times. I think to myself how great it would be to do that for others — provide safe, decent, affordable housing for people to lay down in comfort and security. That keeps me going.”
Dixie Dreams and Boys Club Basketball
As a child, Sanders attended the Dixie Homes Club after school, as well as the Ira Samelson Jr. Club near Treadwell High School. That’s where he met Clark, who began coaching basketball as a way to give back to the community. Clark had no prior experience as a coach, but he had played basketball and hoped those skills would translate. “Your mom knew where you were, and she was okay with that,” Sanders remembers.
Though Sanders would one day grow to be a mentor and a community leader, at the time he would not have admitted he was looking for a mentor for himself. “We started out just going there to have fun,” Sanders says. “I didn’t start out as a teenager saying I wanted to mentor folks. I needed it myself.”
photograph courtesy ruslan-ruslan / unsplash
Discipline and character-building were side effects of the program, not the stated goal, at least not for the boys on the team. “I had an interest in playing basketball,” Sanders says with a chuckle. Of such simple ingredients, a passing interest for basketball and a place his mother could find him, futures can be shaped.
“Cornelius did grow up without a father,” Clark remembers, though he never suspected then and still doesn’t believe that Sanders was intentionally looking for a father figure or mentor at all. “He was just looking to me to be a solid coach.”
Sanders and Clark agree that their friendship began as a simple coach-and-player relationship, but it grew off the courts as Sanders and several other boys looked to Clark for guidance in arenas of life not pertaining to basketball.
Kids, both Sanders and Clark agree, are relatively uncomplicated in their motives. The best way to cultivate values of the importance of diversity and community isn’t with lectures and lessons, but simply to have a comfortable place to play basketball — or music or chess or soccer — and throw the doors open wide, making sure that everyone is safe and welcome. The lessons will be learned through experience, by youth who may have no loftier goals than to entertain themselves for the afternoon.
It Starts at Home
Sanders and Clark are deeply invested in their city, and it shows. The lifelong Memphians believe that, with hard work and careful guidance, the people of Memphis can create a bright future. Clark continues to embody that ideal through his work with Leadership Memphis, as a coach, and with Economic Opportunities nonprofit, which pairs “justice-impacted, under-resourced” Memphians with mentors who coach their mentees in their journey toward financial stability and independence. Through his company Promise Development Corporation, Sanders works to help unhoused and low-income Memphians secure affordable housing. In short, when it comes to working to create a better Memphis, Sanders and Clark are more than just talk.
As young men, both Clark and Sanders heard their families make broad, sweeping generalizations about Memphians of different racial backgrounds, but they both knew people who didn’t fit the stereotypes they heard repeated during supper.
“If we’re looking for how to change not only our city but eventually our world, how do we do that?” Sanders muses. “Our story gives an example of just getting involved where you are, on a small scale, and who knows what will come out of that?”
Both in Color Blind and in conversation, the concept of starting small, working locally, comes up repeatedly. Admittedly, there exists much to find fault with in the world, many problems in need of solutions. The key to becoming overwhelmed, as evidenced by the example of two humble Memphians, is to roll up your sleeves and start where you know you can help. Perhaps then, there is something to that old truism that charity starts at home. With luck and a little momentum, what starts at home can have a surprisingly long reach.
“We do things that are modeled in our homes,” Sanders says. “My mom was a girls softball coach, and she dragged my little happy self around with her. That was my first introduction to doing something in the community, serving in the community and not getting paid for it.” That idea, that our mindsets are modeled and copied first at home, is central to the work that Sanders and Clark do, and to their story as told in Color Blind. Clark’s example, as a basketball player turned volunteer basketball coach, sets the tone. Everyone has some skill, some knowledge, some capacity for care that could potentially benefit someone in need.
Of course, Sanders has taught Clark much as well over the course of their friendship. Sanders is an ordained minister, and Clark admits that his friend has become something of a faith mentor for him over the years, teaching by example as well as through conversations.
“He’s taught me that mentorship swings both ways,” Clark says.
While a common thread in the tapestry of Sanders’ and Clark’s friendship is undeniably that starting small can have tremendous results, it would be unfair to assume that the two men are afraid to dream big. Indeed, when asked what he hopes is in store for his city, Sanders does not mince words.
“What I would like to see for Memphis is racial reconciliation and harmony,” Sanders says.
“Hey, it wouldn’t hurt our city!” Clark quips.
As young men, both Clark and Sanders heard their families make broad, sweeping generalizations about Memphians of different racial backgrounds, but they both knew people who didn’t fit the stereotypes they heard repeated during supper. That knowledge gave them a secure base from which to question other harmful stereotypes and assumptions they heard people make. It also gave them the faith in themselves necessary to show that what they knew to be true was right.
“Racism would have died off years ago if it wasn’t allowed to perpetuate at the dinner table,” Cornelius says, reaffirming that home is the best place to start making the world a better place.
That, too, explains why Clark and Sanders have both poured so much love and energy into mentoring their fellow Memphians.
“This is home,” Clark says.
