A letter from our Civil Wrongs coordinator

February 3, 2023



Dear Reader,

Last week, Dr. Tim Huebner visited my new journalism class.

The distinguished Rhodes College history professor came to talk about the Memphis Massacre of 1866 and how that tragedy – plus decades of Black advocacy – led to the 14^th Amendment, which granted newly freed people citizenship and a promise of equal rights. 

Students in Laura Faith Kebede's class are preparing the next Civil Wrongs installment on the Memphis Massacre

One student’s question after the lecture got to the heart of why we started Civil Wrongs: Why don’t we know about this history?  

If you don’t know, the Memphis Massacre of 1866 started when white police officers confronted a group of Black Union veterans. Racism was especially high during this time because Black veterans and refugees from nearby plantations represented a quest for freedom many white people in Memphis stood against.

Over the next three days, nearly 50 Black people were killed, and every Black school and church was burned down. What was left of the Union army stood by while the violence unfurled. Even though Black people were no longer enslaved, they did not have the protection and rights of U.S. citizens. News of the massacre reached Congress and progressives seized the opportunity to establish what Black advocates had pushed for so long: Equality enshrined in the Constitution. 

This University of Memphis class represents a new phase in our Civil Wrongs project. And the student’s question represented the eagerness and curiosity I’ve seen from them these past three weeks to soak up knowledge previously denied to them.

These students will be researching the Memphis Massacre and reporting present-day connections and lessons for the next season of the Civil Wrongs podcast. We are planning on having another listening event this spring to share what we’ve learned, so be on the lookout for that announcement in the coming months.

In the meantime, stay curious about our past. It still haunts us, even in the beating death of Tyre Nichols.  

Laura

This fall we launched Civil Wrongs, an investigative audio and print journalism project exploring the legacy of racial injustice in the Mid-South. The inaugural season of this Spring/Fall initiative featured a three-part podcast examining the 1917 lynching of Ell Persons, a Black man burned alive by a Memphis mob, and how that injustice reverberates today in coercive police interrogation tactics and false confession. Civil Wrongs is an outgrowth of our collaboration with WKNO, a partnership that’s produced scores of in-depth audio journalism reports, including a special half-hour documentary on the Memphis rape kit scandal as well as reports on nursing home abuse, the pandemic and the victimization of Alicia Franklin.

Reining In Police Brutality: Our investigation of excessive force within the Memphis Police Department exposed repeated incidents of torture in which detainees were beaten, pepper-sprayed or electro-shocked while in handcuffs, leading authorities in 2021 to reform how they conduct official inquiries into brutality. Now, all confirmed incidents of excessive force are sent to the District Attorney for review, a policy that’s led to the filing of criminal charges against several officers.

The Institute is led by director Marc Perrusquia, who worked nearly 30 years as an investigative reporter at The Commercial Appeal. He’s the author of the 2018 book “A Spy In Canaan,’’ which exposed civil rights photographer Ernest Withers’ secret life as an FBI informant and inspired the 10-part podcast “Ernie’s Secret” and the documentary film “The Picture Taker,’’ to be released on PBS in January.

The Institute’s associate director, David Waters, worked more than 30 years at The Commercial Appeal and another four at The Washington Post. He is revered as Memphis’s best news writer and is beloved for his work exploring faith, child poverty and education

Laura Faith Kebede is a Report for America corps member. She recently hosted and wrote WKNO public television’s special “History, Justice and the Journalists” on unresolved civil rights crimes in the Memphis area.  She previously covered education inequities for Chalkbeat Tennessee and local government and religion for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.