Annual Safety Fair Designed to Keep Memphians Safe

 

While practicing social distancing at the City of Memphis 
Workplace Safety & Compliance Safety Fair at the Liberty Bowl 
Memorial Stadium, Doug McGowen, the city’s chief operating officer, 
talks about a couple of potentiallydangerous incidents.
(Photo by Wiley Henry)

Before COVID-19 unleashed malady into the world, the city of Memphis had already in place an initiative to keep the city’s 8,300 employees safe from a wide array of safety hazards.

 

The initiative was actualized July 16 at the Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, where more than 1,800 citizens – including 700 city employees, more than 350 youth, and 65 vendors – gathered under a glistening sun for the City of Memphis Workplace Safety & Compliance Safety Fair.

“The main purpose of it [safety fair] is to make sure that we’re providing up-to-date information to our employees,” Alex Smith, the city’s chief Human Resources officer, said by phone prior to the event.

 

“Whether you're talking about, you know, driving or how people are handling certain materials, safety is always important,” she said.

Alex Smith

While the pandemic has heightened one’s awareness, Smith said being safe at every level of government and throughout the community is critical for the well-being of individuals and their families. 

The educational component of the safety fair included information on fire safety, active shooter, driver safety, disaster preparedness, and COVID-19, which included free vaccinations.

“We wanna make sure as an entity that we are providing the best resources and information to everyone,” said Smith, touting the work of Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and the city’s annual safety fair to keep its citizenry safe. 

“Mayor Strickland’s cornerstone, purpose statement, mission statement,” she explained, “has centered around being ‘brilliant at the basics’ and making sure that we are making life better for Memphians every day.”

“Safety is not an option. Safety is the way we live,” added Dr. Sharli K. Adair, manager of Workplace Safety and Compliance, a division of Human Resources for the city of Memphis.

“I've been here three years, and so this is my third safety fair with the city of Memphis. But this is the very first that we've engaged the community,” Adair said by phone. “Knowledge is power. If people are aware, then people understand [that] people would do better.” 

Dr. Sharli K. Adair

Adair’s declaration that “people would do better” if they are aware was affirmed by Doug McGowen, the city’s chief operating officer, who veered from his talking points to share with the audience a couple of incidences he witnessed that could have been fatal.

He beseeched the audience to move out of harm’s way, for example, if they’re involved in an accident in high-traffic areas – which wasn’t the case, he pointed out, when the occupants of a wrecked vehicle in traffic remained inside even though the vehicle was still operable.

The scene was ripe for injury, or death, as cars whisked by at great speed, he explained. He further underscored the need to be vigilant about safety hazards after witnessing an accident in the making at a construction site.

A man working in a ditch in tandem with a backhoe operator, McGowen noted, was unmindful that his head was in close proximity to the bucket on the arm of the heavy-duty machinery.

What if the operator had sneezed, he asked, or had made the wrong move? The swiveling bucket could easily sever the man. As gruesome as it sounds, Adair said unequivocally, “It is our duty as safety professionals to bring awareness.” 

With all city departments represented – police, fire, public works, etc. – she said providing information and imploring the citizenry to be conscientious of safety hazards was, and has been, the crux of the safety fair. 

However, she added: “There is so much information out there, it's kind of hard to get to the real good stuff. So what we're trying to do is bring the realness and the truth and the facts and the data, and make sure that people are understanding the science.”

After Grief, You Will Smile Again, Author Promises

Demarjé Adair

"You Will Smile Again, I Promise" is written for children
ages 5-12.

Coming to grips with the death of a loved one could be described as an emotional rollercoaster ride that will eventually subside. Then you will smile again, Dr. Marcia Demarjé Adair Smith promises.

In fact, Smith writes about the stages of grief in “You Will Smile Again, I Promise,” a 38-page book that was published in February by Predestined Productions and illustrated by Rhonda Shaw.

Written under Demarjé Adair, a variant of her name, the book was written specifically for 5-12-year-olds who grapple with death and can’t express themselves without some form of intervention. 

Inspiration was derived from her own son’s grief after losing his great grandmother, Dorothy Jean Marlow, whom Adair assisted as granddaughter and caregiver in her home in Houston, Texas.

Dorothy Jean Marlow died Nov. 25, 2017. Jaspiere Smith Jr., who was four then, started showing signs of grief last year, said Adair, a 35-year-old native Memphian who works as a licensed therapist and school counselor.

“I started noticing a lot of the symptoms, a lot of the grieving signs,” said Adair, adding that she was busy grieving and catering to everyone else’s grief and didn’t realize her son was grieving.

In addition to Jaspiere, now seven, others in Adair’s household were grieving too in their own way. Her husband Jaspiere Smith Sr. played a supportive role; and there were no tell-tale signs, according to Adair, that their five-year-old son, Jayceon, was overcome with grief then and now. 

Although the book is just for young children and written in its simplest form, parents have a role to play too, Adair said.

“This is just a way to help kids understand what's going on in their body, as well as helping the parents have the conversation,” she said. “Sometimes they don't know how [to communicate with their grieving child].” 

According to the 1969 book “On Death and Dying,” the author, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, refers to the five stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Adair adds the following blurb to promote her book: “As parents, we cannot protect our children from life experiences like the death of a loved one. Though it pains us to see them hurt, our job is to help guide and validate their experiences with each stage of grief.” 

When it comes to death, Adair said, “We really focus on everything else.” She adds: “Grieving is a communal action. You're never alone. You don't have to process this by yourself.”

“You Will Smile Again, I Promise” can be purchased via the author’s website at www.demarjeadair.com, online at Amazon and Apple Books, and at Walmart, Target, and Barnes and Noble. 

Abraham and Franklin Tout Loving Friendship Ahead of Juneteenth

Telisa Franklin and Dr. Jane Abraham

Dr. Jane Abraham grew up in the late 1950s and ‘60s when animus towards Black people was as American as apple pie. “It was horrific,” she said. “I’m 72 years old and I grew up in the middle of all that mess.”

It may come as a surprise, but Abraham is not Black. Her father was full-blooded Lebanese and her mother had come from the oil fields in Louisiana, she said, adding they were very poor.

“We’re brown skins,” Abraham, a licensed clinical social worker specializing in addictions, noted. “The Middle-Easterners have no designation. [So] we’re called Caucasians.”

When Abraham met Telisa Franklin, president of the annual Memphis Juneteenth Festival, “we just fell instantly in love with each other, and it's just been incredible ever since.”

“She shared with me her story of growing up and how we can become friends,” Franklin said. “She understands that it’s going to take different colors to bring about unity.”

Abraham describes diversity as a big salad with all the ingredients. “We don't want everybody to be the same,” she explained. “We want everyone to keep their own culture and to be who they are and to share, learn and grow.”

Now three months into their friendship, Abraham has found common ground with Franklin, who shared with Abraham the message and meaning of Juneteenth, a national holiday commemorating the end of slavery.

“Juneteenth means freedom to me,” declared Abraham, when asked what she’d gleaned from Franklin’s history lesson about Juneteenth, now in its 28th year in Memphis. 

Formerly held at the historic Robert R. Church Park on Beale Street, Franklin engineered a move this year to Health Sciences Park at the corner of Madison Avenue and South Dunlap Street.

Slated Friday and Saturday, June 18 and 19, revelers will commemorate Juneteenth at the park where slave owner and trader Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife were interred in 1904. 

A crew has begun exhuming their remains and will reinter them at a Confederate museum 200 miles away. The move is being celebrated by many in the Black community as a resounding victory that had been a long time coming. 

The Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization of descendants of Confederate veterans, are overseeing the move. The group had been embroiled in a legal battle to keep the former name of Forrest Park in place and bar the removal of Forrest’s equestrian statue, under which the Forrests were interred.

“Dr. Jane wanted to know how we can learn from the past and how we can embrace the future,” Franklin said. 

Abraham’s own family history is inextricably linked to the terror that the “brown skins” and Black people had to grapple with along with other societal ills that were intended to thwart their advancement.

Her Lebanese father, she said, “…came over on the boat from Beirut in his mother’s belly. He had gone through a lot of prejudicial things growing up in the [Mississippi] Delta. [And] he was really quick to share his experience with us”

There are other experiences that Abraham won’t forget. “My sister and I were reared by African-American women. So, my real first mother was an African-American woman who came in, took care of me, and loved me as her own child, which was an amazing experience.”

Abraham was devastated after “Miss Mattie” died. She was six years old. “That's when I started waking up and realizing that there needed to be some changes,” she said, and decided to take a stand.

She has an affinity for humanity, no matter the person’s race, creed or nationality. But then she is quick to challenge the status quo that Black people are inferior to white people. 

“The African American race is super intelligent,” she said. “But they've been oppressed for so long. That's part of what frightens white people. They're scared. I'm sorry for them.

“A lot of it is based on the fact that many white people are terrified that Black people are going to take over everything and they won't have anything left for themselves. That's just ludicrous.”

Abraham hopes that people will see each other as friends instead of enemies. Juneteenth is just the beginning.

“My life experience has brought me to a place where I’m going to live by it and die by it,” she said. 

Juneteenth Festival Moves to Park Where Klan Leader is Buried

Memphis girl group Karma delighted the audience at Memphis
Juneteenth Festival in 2019. This year's festival will be held June 18
and 19 at Health Sciences Park. Gospel sing Earnest Pugh will be the
headliner. (Photo by Wiley Henry)

There is some irony in relocating the Memphis Juneteenth Festival from the historic Robert R. Church Park on “World Famous” Beale Street to Health Sciences Park, where Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest, are entombed.

The move is official after Telisa Franklin, Juneteenth’s president, announced April 30 that the festival has partnered with Memphis Greenspace, Inc., the non-profit organization that maintains the park.

The new location is deemed a fitting move for the annual festival in Memphis, Franklin pointed out, which is a national holiday in the United States commemorating the end of slavery for African Americans. 

This year’s festival will be observed June 18 and 19 at Health Sciences Park (formerly Forrest Park) at the intersection of Madison Avenue and South Dunlap Street, near the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

Earnest Pugh, a gospel singer and native Memphian, will headline the festival. Music is a staple at Juneteenth, along with food vendors, something for children, and an educational component.

“That park has so much significance. It was not what we were then,” Franklin said. “For Black people, Juneteenth means freedom. Now you’ll see Black people and white people working together on the burial ground of a slave owner and trader and Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Forrest lived and died in Memphis Oct. 29, 1877. He was 56.

“…This will be the first year that the day is recognized by the state, county, and the city of Memphis,” Franklin continued. “Although the day is recognized, Black people in America are still fighting for our lives and economic freedom.” 

Van D. Turner Jr., director and president of Memphis Greenspace, Inc. and Shelby County Commissioner representing District 12, said he was happy to help orchestrate Juneteenth’s move to Health Sciences Park. 

“We need redemption. We need hope. We need a path forward. We need to dig out of poverty. We need to dig out of crime,” he said.

Turner was at the center of controversy in 2017 when Memphis Greenspace purchased the park from the city of Memphis and another Confederate park for $1,000 each. Shortly thereafter, the equestrian statue of Forrest was removed Dec. 20 from its base. 

The move was triggered by a nationwide hullabaloo over the takedown of Confederate monuments and the affront to Black people who believed the monuments were erected to keep the legacy of slavery and white supremacy alive. 

“We are turning the pages of history today,” said Elaine Turner, director of Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum, a 19^th century home that was part of the Underground Railroad. “We are rededicating this park. Juneteenth means freedom.... We are reclaiming our history on this ground.”

Commemorating the 1991 African American People’s Convention

 

The team (from left): Brunette Mays, Tony Jones, Shep Wilbun
(featured in the documentary), Anniece Robinson, Arthur Robinson,
Zellner Madkins. (Courtesy photo)

On April 27, 1991, a group of young Black political strategists and activists convened the African American People’s Convention at The Mid-South Coliseum and changed the paradigm of Memphis politics forever. 

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the People’s Convention, noted documentarian Chuck O’Bannon was tapped to produce a 60-minute documentary to preserve that moment in history.

Entitled “Reflection and Reconnection,” the documentary chronicles the grass roots strategy and the successful outcome of the People’s Convention as told by the pioneers who convened it. 

One of those pioneers is Anniece Robinson, project manager for the 30th Anniversary of the People's Convention and the executive producer for The 1991 People's Convention Documentary.

“As I was being interviewed in late March for a recent award and was responding to an inquiry about my role in the People's Convention, it was then that I realized it was the 30th Anniversary,” she said.

Robinson said she had an epiphany to commemorate the People’s Convention and didn’t want that moment in history to be forgotten. Then she assembled a team to help her pull it all together.

“I was divinely instructed to not let this moment go by,” she said, adding: “An in-depth accounting of the story has never been told.”

The story will unfold Saturday, May 1, when the official trailer of the documentary airs on Comcast Channel 17 at 5:30 p.m. on The Rainbow Connection, a community affairs program. The full documentary will premiere at a red-carpet black-tie event Saturday, July 3, at a local theatre that will be decided during the post production.   

Several pioneers, including Robinson, are featured in the documentary recounting their role in the People’s Convention, which led to the selection of Dr. Willie W. Herenton, former superintendent of the legacy Memphis City Schools, as the consensus candidate to challenge the two-term Republican incumbent Mayor Richard “Dick” Hackett Jr.

Herenton, a Democrat, eventually succeeded in wresting the seat from Hackett by a mere 142 votes in the 1991 mayoral election to become Memphis’s first elected African-American mayor and thus made history in one of the city’s most important exercises in democracy.

The city had been largely devoid of Black representation on some levels of government and dominated by white powerbrokers wielding considerable influence in Memphis politics, even though Memphis, in 1990, was 60 percent Black according to that year’s census. 

On the day of the Convention, a downpour thrashed the city. But the inclement weather did not deter the 5,500 people who waded through pelting rain and mud to choose a consensus candidate to take on Hackett. He was thought to be a shoo-in for a third term since no Black candidate had been able to wrest the seat from a white mayor or contender vying for the seat in any mayoral race due to the runoff system. The People’s Convention successfully subverted that process for the first time in Memphis history.

The convention’s architects – the late Dedrick “Teddy” Withers, the late Vernon Ash, Shep Wilbun and Robinson – could not have been more relieved after watching the influx of Black people file through the coliseum door.

What the architects envisioned was a Black consensus candidate who could challenge the incumbent in a one-on-one match-up without other Black candidates splitting the vote. Vote-splitting was common and a factor in loss elections for Black aspirants seeking public office. 

There had been some advancements made on the political front prior to 1991. For example: civil rights attorney A.W. Willis’s historic victory to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1964; attorney Russell B. Sugarmon’s successful bid for a state Senate seat in 1966; and Harold Ford Sr., the first African American to represent Tennessee in the U.S. Congress in 1974. Citywide races, however, proved difficult to win.

Even though significant milestones were achieved by other African Americans holding public office, the office of Memphis mayor had been elusive and never occupied by an elected African American. An interim stint was as much as any Black aspirant could achieve.

There was a reason for this. Whites had maintained their grip on power since 1966 after the Memphis City Charter was overhauled by mostly white men who decided there should be seven district seats and six at-large seats.

According to the revised charter, if a candidate vying for an at-large seat or a mayoral seat fell short of the majority vote, there would be a run-off between the two top vote-getters. 

For example, a Black candidate could win 49 percent of the vote versus a White candidate’s 43 percent and still lose the race in a run-off. To avoid a run-off, the candidate would have to get 50 percent of the vote.

This came to an end in 1991 after the United States Justice Department filed a suit against the election process in Memphis based on the provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The late Dr. Talib-Karim Muhammad, a freedom fighter who won a seat on the City Council in 1995 from Super District 8-Postion 1, filed a suit in 1988 against runoff elections. His suit was folded into the DOJ suit in 1991.

The late U.S. District Judge Jerome Turner had declared that run-off elections in city-wide races discriminated against Black candidates and thus had given white candidates an unfair advantage. There would be no run-off in the 1991 mayoral race and others going forward.

“Prior to 1991, attaining the coveted mayor's seat was not successful,” Robinson said. After Herenton was elected mayor, she added: “It gave a renewed hope of what is attainable when those of greater good are on one accord.”

The victory was hard-fought. “It was our journey. I made history because the people empowered [me]…” Herenton said. “I was just an instrument. We made history. We were unified.”

Family Celebrates Thelma Robinson’s 105th Birthday

Thelma Robinson sits for a snapshot with her daughters at her 100th
birthday celebration. From left (standing): the late Gayle Haynes, Roy
Luellen Morrow (seated), and Gloria Robinson-Simpson. (Courtesy photos)

     Thelma Robinson has had some good days and she’s had some bad days, according to her granddaughter, Joycelyn Simpson. But what do you expect from someone who recently celebrated her 105th birthday? 
     Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Robinson celebrated her birthday on April 10th via Zoom with her family: children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great great grandchildren.
     At her advanced age, everything may not be as clear as, let’s say, when she was 100 years old. Nevertheless, she is a trooper whose longevity no doubt is factored into her DNA. 
     “She is declining a little,” Simpson admitted, when asked to speak with the centenarian by phone. “She can speak, answer yes and no, but not hold long conversations.”

Thelma Robinson and granddaughter
Joycelyn Simpson after a trip to the
beauty shop.

     Again, it’s expected of someone her age – for she has seen a lot and has done a lot during her 10-plus decades of life. Now her words are few, although it doesn’t preclude her from having “a sense of humor…a little sarcasm,” Simpson said. “She didn’t bite her tongue about anything.” 
     What Robinson may not say, she may telegraph. But it didn’t take much for Simpson to learn how important it was for her grandmother to vote for Barack Obama for president in 2008 and again in 2012. 
     Frank Haynes, Simpson’s uncle, took her to the Colt Community Center in Colt, Ark. (between Forrest City and Wynn, Ark.) to ensure that Robinson wouldn’t miss the opportunity of a lifetime to elect America’s first Black president. 
     “She was very happy to vote. She wanted to vote,” Simpson said. “She had seen so much in her life and was proud to help put an African American in the White House.”
     For Robinson’s 100th birthday, when she lived in Little Rock, “I was able to ask for a letter [from President Obama] while he was still in office. She liked that a lot…to get something from him.”
     She also voted in 2016 for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Conway, Ark., Simpson said, hoping she could help Clinton break the glass ceiling for women in presidential politics. Her vote was her voice, and it resounded loud and clear whom she wanted for president.
     “She always believed in voting. She raised her kids to believe in voting. She raised her kids to believe in education,” said Simpson, recalling that her grandmother was conferred a high school diploma at 60.
     Robinson is originally from Marvell, Ark., in Phillips County, about a two-hour drive from Memphis. She has lived all over Arkansas in Monroe, St. Francis and Jefferson counties.
     Simpson said her grandmother raised hogs and cattle on the family farm in Arkansas, made peach brandy, Muscadine wine, harvested peanuts, made sorghum molasses, and cultivated a garden.
     She married Roy Bismarch Robinson in 1937 and was widowed after his death in 1984. Her daughter Gayle (who is deceased) and son-in-law Frank Haynes moved her into their home in Pine Bluff, Ark.
     “Frank stopped being her son-in-law a long time ago,” Simpson said. “Now he’s her son.” 
     Robinson birthed eight children. All are deceased but two: Roy Luellen Morrow and Gloria Robinson-Simpson.
     After a stint with the Haynes in rural Arkansas, Robinson moved to Memphis in 2016 to live with Simpson’s mother, Gloria Robinson-Simpson, and her daughter, Stephanie Simpson. 
     “It’s a blessing that my mother is able to take care of her at her age,” said Simpson, 53, noting that her 78-year-old mother had moved back to Memphis from Virginia to care for Robinson. She didn’t want her placed in a nursing home.
     Family is important to her grandmother, Simpson said. “She likes being around family. She likes the attention [that she gets] from the family. She also loves to go to the beauty shop to get her hair washed and curled, and her nails done.” 
     Her independence is just as important as pampering herself. “She didn’t stop driving until she was 90,” Simpson said. “She didn’t want to give up her driver’s license. We all call her the matriarch of the family, but she also was the matriarch of the lead foot.” 
     Translation: When Robinson was in the driver’s seat, she loved to accelerate. Simpson remembers her grandmother’s red Chevrolet Impala with a white top moving rapidly to and fro.
     What she did not give up was attending church services. But that would cease for now due to the pandemic. She had worshiped at several churches in Arkansas before joining A Worship Experience Christian Church and Outreach Ministry in Memphis.
     When Robinson was in church, Simpson said she would sing church songs. Now she’s just enjoying the love and support of family.

Whittier A. Sengstacke Jr. was proud of his heritage

Whittier Alexander Sengstacke Jr.

During the turbulent 1960s, Whittier Alexander Sengstacke Jr. wrote cutting-edge news stories for the Memphis Tri-State Defender. If the surname sounds familiar, it’s because the name speaks volumes. 

Sengstacke was the eldest son of the late venerable newspaper publisher Whittier Sengstacke Sr., and the nephew of the late publishing magnate John H. Sengstacke, who founded the Defender in 1951. 

Sengstacke had been ill for a while and died the morning of Feb. 20 at Midtown Center for Health and Rehabilitation. He was 76.

In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, the respected journalist held the title of editor-in-chief at the Defender. He reported from the trenches and cobbled together breaking news stories from a Black perspective, which the mainstream press had largely ignored.

He was an eyewitness in the struggle for freedom and justice. For Black journalists during that era, fear no doubt was a constant reminder of the dangers that confronted them while they were trying to shed light on the age-old problem of systemic racism. Whatever confronted Sengstacke, he kept reporting the news. 

His career highlights included covering hard news – police brutality, crime, politics – and other noteworthy news stories. He continued to write and performed other duties as well for the Defender into the late 1990s. 

“He was a great guy, very knowledgeable of the newspaper business and didn’t mind sharing his knowledge,” said Marzie G. Thomas, publisher and editor of the Defender in the early 2000s.

“He had been in the business all of his life,” she said. “We loved Whit. He was a wonderful person. He always was so supportive of me.”

He also was supportive of Thomas’ predecessor, Audrey Parker McGhee, the Defender’s publisher and editor from the late 1980s until she retired in the early 2000s. 

“He was well-grounded as a member of the Black Press,” she said, “not only because his father was head of the Defender, but because of the Sengstacke name. He always talked about his heritage.”

He was very courageous too, McGhee added. 

Born in Chicago, Ill., Sengstacke received dual degrees in speech and journalism from Tennessee State University and applied his skills to the family business of newspaper publishing.

He was just as steeped in writing plays and performing on the stage as he was in journalism. He first thrived in his native Chicago before bringing his skillset to Memphis, where he settled down as a journalist for the Defender. 

Ethel Sengstacke, a former TV camera operator, took note of her big brother’s work ethics and varied accomplishments in journalism, including his work in the theatre when she was much younger. 

“He was always into theatrics,” she said. “He used to have a puppet show at the public library. We put on shows for the neighborhood kids. One time he built a stage and I fell off it.”

The injury still reminds Ethel Sengstacke of that harrowing experience. Other experiences were typical between a brother and his younger sister. “He was a big brother who always took me to the movies,” she said, “and he would give me advice.”

Pat Mitchell Worley remembers her uncle’s creative side. “He used to do art projects with me,” she said, “like papier-mâché, acting projects, and storytelling. He was the first to push the idea of storytelling.” 

A memorial service for Whittier Alexander Sengstacke Jr. will be held in March. A date has not been determined. Serenity Funeral Home at 1638 Sycamore View Rd. in Memphis has charge.