Waiting for Godot in Orange Mound, Memphis

     The first civil rights bill passed in 1866.  The law made the right to buy and possess property an integral part of the definition of freedom for the newly created 4,000,000 United States citizens set free by The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.  The Fair Housing Act in 1968, prohibited race discrimination in sales and rentals in housing.  Another Act to give African Americans rights and freedoms to own property.
     Orange Mound in Memphis, Tennessee began life as a 5,000 acre plantation of slavery.  In 1889, The owners Deaderick start selling plots of land to the new freedmen of color to build their own homesteads and estates.  Can you rub 2 quarters together?  If you could in the 1890’s, you could then put 50 cent down to purchase a $40 lot and build your own home in the new Orange Mound community.  People came from near and far in the tri-state region to hurry and accept the offer before the lots sold out. 
     For once freedmen built houses in their own community.  The residents found the community idyllic to live there raising their families in a segregated and somewhat safe setting.  As the decades progressed, men and women would build businesses, eateries, the WC Handy Theater, nightclubs, and churches along “Park Avenue” the main commercial corridor in Orange Mound.  They even had a professional baseball team, The Orange Mound Sluggers.  It was a thriving community.
     Tragedy strikes in 1968.  A mighty King is slain just a few miles from the doorsteps of Orange Mound families.  In the same year the Fair Housing Act, which was supposed to propel people of color forward, set in motion an unexpected chain of events.  People could now move to “other better neighborhoods” which they did.  With this mass exodus of the highest income earners, it left a huge hole of community dollars being spent in small businesses causing a chain reaction of poor business conditions.  One after another, businesses started to fail.  Livelihoods began to crumble and home values plummeted. 
     The only people left to try to hold on were residents not able to successfully run the commercial business district.  Soon, high schoolers who knew education would give them a chance to better themselves went to college, never to return to their old community in the 1980’s.  The final blow for any chance of upward mobility came with the advent of crack cocaine in the early 1990’s.  This drug killed all hope and ambition of neighbor citizens with little opportunity.  This sealed the fate of Orange Mound.
     What started as an attempt to right a wrong through federal lawmaking had an unforeseen consequence of destroying African American wealth on a nationwide scale.  The lady in the image, Hazel Jones, remembers the glory days of Orange Bound, “I always told people, I thought I was rich because we had so much food.”  Another woman, Paula Campbell, grew up in Orange Mound.  She and her husband James, both in their 50’s, built their 4,000 sq foot dream home at a total cost of $300,000.  The city of Memphis assessed the value of the home at $150,000.  What?  That’s right, the value of the home is worth less than the cost of construction.  Not a sound investment, is it?  What is happening here and in other African American communities across the country?  Why can’t our assets grow in our own communities?  
     The solution is really quite simple which no one, and I do mean NO ONE, seems to be addressing, let alone, trying to execute.  America operates on production and profit in business making enterprises.  If a community is not investing in startups and entrepreneurs to produce profitable and desirable businesses to bring in consumers to purchase goods and services, then it will decline in value on its way to bankruptcy through stagnation and neglect if the trend isn’t reversed.  Wealth is created, first by accumulating assets.  Second, those assets must appreciate in value every year to bring new growth and investment for the next generation.  We as a group of people are more than capable of executing this sound business strategy.  Are we not?
     Investment in young minds with fresh ideas and businesses will bring communities such as Orange mound into the modern 21^st century.  Whenever a young talented Black adult wants to create a work, they must travel to other communities to monetize their inventions, works of art, and businesses.  There are no avenues to create in their own communities. There are no Capitalist looking for profitable businesses to invest in.  On the other side of the equation.  There is much unemployment, especially young Black males with idle hands to produce works of unproductive actions, further increasing the rate of deterioration and devaluations.   In other words, Black Americans are endless in talent, but short on business management and organization.  How long will we continue to allow this harmful exodus of talent to create wealth for other people?  What are we waiting for?

Information used for this blog from the New York Times article “How the Real Estate Boom Left Black Neighborhoods Behind” 6/15/23