Global Adventures

Amplify Memphis Day Ten: The Arts as an Economic Driver on Broad Ave. and the Power of Trade Skills in Binghampton

Today’s student blogger is Cecelia Cordera (’17):

On Friday of our second week of Amplify Memphis, we visited the Broad Avenue Arts District and the Binghampton Development
Corporation. The Broad Avenue Arts District is extremely unique in that it is a part of town that has been revitalized not only to improve the commercial area, but with the creative and artistic community’s energy being the main driver of the recreation of the neighborhood. Along the strip of Broad Avenue are art studios, art galleries, restaurants, retail shops, and event spaces. Another unique aspect of Broad Avenue is that there are also murals and public art incorporated into the walls and buildings along the avenue. We visited two businesses in the Broad Avenue Arts District.

First, we met with Karlee Hickman, the founder of Propcellar Vintage Rentals, who moved to Memphis from California with her husband who flies for FedEx and became an entrepreneur. Her idea started with a piece of furniture she bought and refurbishedto sell. However, after seeing the finished piece, she was unable to part with her work. She kept doing this with additional pieces and rather than selling the refurbished or antique pieces, she kept them and rented them out to individuals for photo-shoots, weddings, birthdays, and fundraisers. Propcellar as a rental business became successful enough that Karlee expanded it by renting and refurbishing a phenomenal industrial warehouse space about a block from Broad Avenue where she can both store her props as well as host really cool eventsincorporating the props stored in the facility. Her story and space are unique to the neighborhood and have helped to incorporate both the local and artistic influences that makes Broad Avenue unique as a neighborhood. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Propcellar because I thought it was incredibly unique and loved the way the space is decorated. I thought her props and furniture were lovely and incredibly unique, something I would definitely want to use if I were planning on hosting a major event such as a wedding, prom, or fundraiser. It was also very gracious of her to let us come and visit her work space and let us view all that she had worked so hard to create.

After our visit with Mrs. Hickman, we visited with Tom Clifton who owns T. Clifton Art, which features works of oil painting, blown glass, and sculpture from a number of different local and national artists. Tom gave us some history about Broad Avenue and the way the neighborhood used to be as well as how local artists and entrepreneurs came together to revitalize this part of town. He was very knowledgeable, and had been working in Broad Avenue for over a decade. He told us about how before there were the number of shops, restaurants, and galleries that there are now, the local artists and business owners created festivals and fairs around Broad Avenue in order to get the community more engaged and to help them imagine what Broad Avenue might become someday with a collective artistic and entrepreneurial energy. These artists and locals also painted bike lanes along the street to connect the district with bike trails at Overton Park and the Shelby Farms Greenline that runs east/west from Shelby Farms. The bike lanes have been a major part of the community and are still there, enjoyed by thousands of individuals every year.

Our last stop of the day was with one of my favorite organizations in Memphis, the Binghampton Development Corporation (BDC). We met with Noah Gray, the executive director of the BDC and he gave us a presentation outlining what the organization’s programs do, the progress that has been made in the community, individual success stories of individuals who have been involved with their programs, and the BDC’s plans for the future. The mission of the BDC is to “Improve the quality of life in the Binghampton Community. As a community oriented and faith backed entity, the Binghampton Development Corporation is working to be an instrument of God’s love to reach those in economic oppression.” Noah Gray clearly is passionate about the mission and the work that he is doing.The work done by the BDC is both impactful and influential. Mr. Gray gave us some examples of stories about people from the neighborhood, and how prosperous they have become in their adult lives because of their involvement in programs offered through the BDC. One man who was a part of the trade skills training program through the BDC got hired by a construction company, and because of his obvious skills and subsequent success, he became a manager at the company at merely
twenty-three years of age. This enabled him to hire other skilled graduates of the education programs through the BDC. Because of his success, he was able to positively impact other people from his neighborhood by providing them with jobs as well. This is an embodiment of the mission of the BDC and is only one example of a story of how the BDC is impacting people’s lives, and the community as a whole, in innumerable ways. The BDC is revitalizing the Binghampton neighborhood in amazing ways and is one of the most impactful non-profits in the city of Memphis.

Amplify Memphis Day Eight and Nine: Wellness and Safety for the Under-Resourced

Today’s student bloggers include Aidan Lovelace and Aaron Shanaman (’20)

This morning, we went to the Church Health Center where they explained the various ways that they help those in the community who don’t have health insurance or critical wellness options. The Church Health Center provides a holistic approach to wellness for clients that focuses on bodies and spirits and they are so passionate about their work with the community. They are able to do their work based on donations from individuals as well as foundations. They also help provide healthy food options with a weekly farmer’s market for those in neighborhoods without grocery stores close by. They hold teaching classes where they teach people to not only cook healthier but to cook within their current budget as well. Many people are surprised when they can eat many dishes that they normally do but in a more healthy way. They also provide people from any socioeconomic group access to a gym and workout classes for fitness training at a low cost. In addition, they showed us their therapeutic pool where they teach people with issues such as arthritis to get fit without as much pain through activities such as water aerobics.

After our lunch, we visited Memphis Athletic Ministries (MAM). MAM’s mission is to provide a safe and place for children, specifically from under-resourced neighborhoods, to channel their energies towards sports, to build relationships, and provide Christian mentoring. MAM operates summer camps for children and even opened their doors to children in Memphis who lost power after the recent storms. MAM welcomes children and teens up to the age of 18. Furthermore, MAM operates a Friday-night basketball league that has been shown to reduce violent crime in the city when the games are occurring. First, we were given an overview of the organization and its mission. Next, we toured MAM’s facility and got to play games like basketball and volleyball with some of the children in the gym. MAM has a main central location that came from a donation from the MemphisGrizzlies and had planned to build more facilities like it, but it turned out that bringing their programming into existing church and community center gyms around Memphis proved to be more cost effective. Overall, Memphis Athletic Ministries does terrific work for the city of Memphis and impacts thousands of children every year.

Amplify Memphis Day Seven: Mitigating Food Insecurity in Memphis

Today’s guest bloggers are Ginny McCarroll (’18) and Boo McWaters (’20): 

Food insecurity is a big issue in Memphis. Today, we took a trip to the Mid-South Food Bank. The Mid-South Food Bank was founded in 1981 and is a member of Feeding America, which is the national network of food banks. We met with a man named Clifton Rocket (yes, like the rocket ship) who the described the Mid-South Food Bank and its specific mission. He shared with us that they are a non-profit organization and have teamed up with almost 290 other organizations to provide food to those in need. They get many donations from companies that produce and manage foodstuffs such as Kroger, when they have an abundance of product they no longer want or is no longer being sold. We then were taken to their distribution center and were introduced to a man who works at the Mid-South Food Bank named Tonio. Tonio then gave us our job, which was to pack the boxes of non-perishables that would later be distributed by MIFA volunteers to seniors who needed food. We packed a ton afood (a literal ton of food). We packed 2680.2 pounds of food to deliver to the seniors involved in the MIFA program in just about two hours! This experience was something that made me personally feel like an amazing person. Knowing that so many people were going to get food and no longer be hungry made me feel like I was on top of the world. I really felt as if I was feeding the need, which is the organization’s slogan. This experience was definitely an eye-opening experience.

We headed to the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association (MIFA) to deliver “Meals On Wheels” around Memphis. Since it is summer, many of their regular volunteers were not in town to deliver on their routes, so our group was actually feeding men and women who may not have gotten their meals without us. Whether we had deliveredmeals before today or not, this was going to be an invaluable learning experience for all of us. In the zip code we were delivering in, there are no grocery stores nor nutritious foods in the small stores that are in the local neighborhood. The people we delivered to either have health issues, lack transportation, or are without means to pay for their food. We were given the basics instructions about how to deliver, and we got on our way. The first delivery was at a house, and then the group split up to go deliver to several people who lived together in a high rise apartment building for seniors. After that, we went house to house. We ended up only finishing one of our two routes, by delivering twenty-seven meals, because we had so many clients and only one vehicle. We returned to a meeting in the conference room at MIFA with Linda Marks, our MIFA volunteer representative. Sitting around the table, the group shared what we all thought, saw, heard, and/or said while we delivered meals. We were able to reflect on how grateful we were for our own ability to access nutritious and abundant food and how important the meals we just delivered are. We also expressed concern for the men and women on the unfinished route who had not received their meals yet. Overall, our time with the Metropolitan Inner-Faith Association was a learning experience for all of us that opened our eyes to a part of Memphis that we are not used to seeing each day.

Amplify Memphis Day Six: A Powerful Experience in the Dichotomous Nature of Our History

Today’s blog post authors are Cecelia Cordera (’17) and Maggie Kay Imorde (’20):

Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee meant that the Civil Rights Movement has always been a piece of history close to my heart being that many incredibly historic events in this movement took place in my home town. I had first visited the National Civil Rights Museum many years ago but because I took U.S. History this year, this piece of history was fresh in my mind. Touring this museum was an incredibly powerful experience. It accurately captures the events that occurred during this remarkable movement and gives the individual a direct look into the events that really occurred.

The museum is separated into chronological order beginning with the start of slavery in America and ending with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel right here in Memphis. We each picked eight exhibits out of the twenty four on permanent display and studied these specifically to get a more precise view into a handful of events rather than be overwhelmed by all that was presented. The first exhibit I picked was entitled “I, Too, Am America: Combatting Jim Crow 1896-1954”. The Jim Crow Laws were basically the backbone of white racism, the foundation whites stood on in order to justify their inhumane treatment of an entire people. The South, and our home town of Memphis, was a breeding ground for extreme racism. While slavery was outlawed by the time of the Civil Rights Movement, the superiority ideology of whites believing they are better than blacks remained. Therefore, Jim Crow Laws thrived. Jim Crow Laws were incredibly complicated and included many restrictions including blacks rights to vote, their seating arrangement on bus systems, and their ability to go to certain public places such as parks and restaurants. Jim Crow Laws were the reason blacks had to fight back and embark on their quest for freedom and equality.

Once the Civil Rights Movement began, many different campaigns and protests began in order to combat the laws in place during the fifties and sixties. I looked at Brown vs. Board of Education, which was the Supreme Court case that ended segregation based on race in schools, the Montgomery Bus Boycott which began with Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her seat for a white man, and “sit-ins.” The sit in movement really stood out to me because it was one of the first national movements of the 1960’s Civil Rights Campaign and a woman named Clara Luper was instrumental in this campaign. I found her incredibly interesting, first and foremost because she was a woman, and that she was also a teacher who was leading this incredibly effective and dangerous campaign. However, once she began to lead the sit ins, her teaching license was revoked and she was arrested over a dozen times. I loved the fact that the CivilRights Movement was lead by both men and women. Women lead campaigns, protests, and movements that were vital to the cause and helped shaped the course of history. Women were equally as important as men and the Civil Rights Movement never would have taken place without women such as Rosa Parks and Clara Luper.

Next I looked at the Selma Voting Rights Campaign, the Black Power Movement, Black Pride, and lastly, the sanitation strike that was the cause of Dr. King’s life coming to Memphis where he met his end. Each of these topics were incredibly moving and powerful, all representing the immense struggle the African American community had to endure in order to gain their inalienable rights. Their power and endurance is unparalleled to any movement I have ever read about or studied in history classes. While I am incredibly proud to be a born and raised Memphian, it hurts my heart to know about all of the evil that took place here against an entire community. Dr. King’s mission was both powerful and inspiring. I think that we can all learn from what occurred in the past, prevent it from happening again, and emulate the actions of Dr. King. I thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Civil Rights museum and learned a lot about the historical events that occurred in our city.

As part of today’s journey, we also visited St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The majority of us had never been to St. Jude before so we were all very excited to explore this hospital known all over the world for the way that it helps children and families, turning no one away from care. We split up into two groups because only people sixteen and older were able to go on the tour inside the actual hospital where patients were being treated. The group that was under sixteen stayed in the pavilion. In the pavilion, there were a few exhibits that showed different aspects of St. Jude. A few of the exhibits were about the founder, Danny Thomas, as well as the mission of the hospital and how the hospital raises support. The younger group was given the chance to walk around the pavilion and look at those exhibits while the older group was touring. They were also able to visit the garden at St. Jude. The garden was a calm environment with shady trees, flowers, and a couple of fountains, and it was overall very peaceful. The older group saw where patients were treated for various ailments, special facilities for family members and friends of the hospital to give blood directly to those being cared for, and where research was being done at the hospital. There were a couple of facts that I thought were very interesting. One of them was how St. Jude has teachers who help the patients stay on track for school and not get behind. The teachers even communicate with the patients’ teachers at schools so that they are teaching the correct things. Also, I never knew that St. Jude pays for all the costs of the treatments not covered by insurance, which I found amazing. We sat together at the end of the day and we talked about not only what we had learned about St. Jude, but also our thoughts about our experiences at the National Civil Rights Museum. It was a very powerful day.