The Race Factor An outsider contrasts Memphis' election with others in state. by JOSEPH SWEAT ayoral races in three of Tennessee's big cities this fall point up just how much more race is a factor in West Tennessee than in other grand divisions of the state. On Thursday Memphis will have elected (or re-elected) a mayor who almost certainly would be African American (city councilman Joe Ford having made a strong bid to unseat Mayor Willie Herenton). Late polls showed Herenton with a slight lead, with the possibility of anything happening. Ford and Herenton are both black, as is a third candidate, Shelby County Commission chairman Shep Wilbun. Also in the Memphis race were three white candidates, Councilwoman Mary Rose McCormick, County Commissioner Pete Sisson, and professional wrestler Jerry Lawler. The question raised has been not which one of these whites will win, but how many white votes each will pull away from one or the other front runner. Contrast all of these racially laced questions in Memphis with the way things turned out in the recent races in Nashville and Knoxville. Voting along racial lines played only a minor part in those two cities. In the Nashville contest, Bill Purcell hammered former three-term Mayor and Congressman Dick Fulton with 84 percent of the vote in a runoff. Granted, Fulton had conceded the race from the beginning and didn't campaign. But that was because Purcell had run so well in the general election against both Fulton and Vice Mayor Jay West. In the general election Purcell received strong backing from African-American voters, who virtually ignored Jessie McDonald, the one black candidate in the race. Purcell swept the predominately black precincts in the runoff. Even more telling in the Nashville election was the fact that white voters throughout the city voted heavily in at-large council races for two African Americans who became the first in history to win a countywide race. Nashville now has what Purcell likes to call "a council that looks like the city," one that is one-fourth black and one-fourth female -- 11 blacks and 11 women. More important, perhaps, is that there is considerable evidence that white voters showed little reluctance to vote for black candidates, and vice versa. In Knoxville, Mayor Victor Ashe rolled easily to re-election by grabbing over 57 percent of the vote. Again, as in Nashville, the front runner had little trouble picking up African-American votes. The Memphis election Thursday could prove the pundits wrong in seeing so much of the election in racial terms. After all, Mayor Herenton has been attempting to build ties with white voters every since he defeated former Mayor Dick Hackett and became Memphis' first African-American chief executive. And it is interesting to note that African Americans were active voters in Memphis long before they were in many other Southern cities. Ironically, this has a lot to do with the legacy of a white man, the famed political leader E.H. "Boss" Crump. As the late William D. Miller, Crump's biographer, put it, ". . .[T]he important thing is that blacks voted. Because of Crump they learned to play a full, responsible role in politics. It's a role that has served the black community well in modern Memphis." The deep racial divisions that developed in Memphis politics came long after Crump was in his grave. The turning point was the 1968 garbage strike and the subsequent death of Martin Luther King Jr. From then on Memphis became virtually two cities, one white and one black. The road back to making it one city again may have started with the election of Herenton and his efforts to reach out to white business and civic leaders, and the vote count Thursday night may indicate just how racially divided Memphis remains. (Joseph Sweat, former director of the Tennessee Municipal League, had been serving until recently as interim legislative director for new Nashville Mayor Purcell.)