With almost complete unanimity, the Memphis community reacted with outrage and dismay to last week’s not-guilty verdict for three MPD officers in the Tyre Nichols case.
What compounded the prevailing sense of justice denied was the fact that the verdict, on a crime committed against a young Black victim, was rendered by a jury that was all white.
That jury was drawn from a Chattanooga pool after a defense objection that an impartial jury could not be drawn from the Memphis area, the site of abundant advance publicity regarding the case.
Hamilton County was adjudged to have the lowest amount of pre-trial publicity of any large Tennessee community with regard to this case.
Originally the jury contained two non-white jurors — one Black and one of Asian ethnicity — but both these jurors ended up being discharged for health reasons.
Whatever the reason for the imported jurors’ verdict and regardless of their point of origin, the decision was a source of surprise and even astonishment to most observers (DA Steve Mulroy himself professed to be “bewildered”). And it resulted — perversely, perhaps — in a further tarnishing of Memphis’ image, already suffering from the widely seen gruesome images of the officers’ tag-team beating of Nichols that turned out to be lethal.
Local officials, in their post-verdict expressions, strained for the right combination of heartfelt concern for the Nichols family, horror or disgust at the outcome, and lip service, or lack of it, for the prevailing legal system.
Some were, in the Orwellian sense, more equal than others.
On the record of the family’s reaction, and that of their most aggrieved sympathizers, who gathered in the aftermath at the National Civil Rights Museum, the least satisfactory performance was that of Memphis Mayor Paul Young, whose thought was to do an over-platitiudinous and over-produced standup with Police Chief C.J. Davis (the creator of the Scorpion unit), the import of which was to bestow confidence in the predominant good intent of the MPD.
For their pains, the unlucky pair would receive anguished catcalls from the crowd at the NCRM.
Worse is coming for them and city government in general, with an adverse Department of Justice critique of the MPD sinking in and the family’s $500 million lawsuit coming up.
• In a longish and impassioned statement Monday on her Facebook page, state Senator London Lamar took critics of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools board to task for their negative attitude regarding the board’s firing of Marie Feagins as schools superintendent.
And she implied that unnamed defenders of Feagins had concrete political motives. “There are political consultants in this city who were helping M.F. stir the drama — and trying to get her to run for County Mayor. WHAT?! Some of these so-called ‘consultants’ don’t care about leadership impact — they only care about the next check or contract. They’ll support anybody who promises power or money.”
“M.F.” — shorthand for an obscene epithet as well as being Feagins’ initials — was how Lamar consistently referred to Feagins in her statement.
She said anyone who “talked trash about our board members owes them an apology … And not a text or a phone call. I want y’all to march yourselves down to the school board meeting and apologize on the record, just like you marched down there to disrespect and drag them for making THE RIGHT decision!”
Lamar returned to her charge of political motivation: “[M]any of you even joined with our oppressors to champion the state coming in to dismantle our school system. The same state that destroyed our system with the ASD. The same state that stripped funding for housing and healthcare, put more guns on the streets, attacked Black and Brown communities, and eliminated DEI efforts. Them! Y’all helped them do that. You joined M.F. and the Republicans to divide our city, and now we’ve got to clean up the mess.”
Lamar’s statement urges, “We don’t need to dismantle the board. Y’all need to register to vote — and GO VOTE.”
Her Facebook statement reflects an intensity on Lamar’s part which she has increasingly manifested in her legislative duties and which has resulted in increasing mentions of her as a potential future congressional candidate.
