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North Memphis
North Memphis

At the Smokey City Block Party In North Memphis

Smokey City is one of North Memphis’ oldest neighborhoods, allegedly named for the smoke from fires that early residents used to cook their meals and warm their houses. Each summer, the neighborhood sponsors a block party and picnic with a DJ, kids’ activities and plenty of grilled chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs. 6/2/12

Saturday morning April 21 I went out to the Vollentine Evergreen Art Walk in North Memphis, but the weather was grey and extremely cold. Although there was food, live music, kids activities and attractive artwork, it was just too wintery to enjoy much. 

At the Pop-Up Arts Festival in North Memphis at the Hollywood Community Center, March 24, 2012

ArtsMemphis has begun to sponsor a number of Pop-Up Arts Festivals in different neighborhoods around Memphis, and on Saturday March 24, 2012, the first one of the year was held at Hollywood Community Center in North Memphis. The event featured live music, African drumming and dance, food and various arts and crafts. 

Memphis Activist Dr. Coby Smith at the Juneteenth in Douglass Park

Dr. Coby Vernon Smith, noted Memphis activist and educator, is the first African-American student to attend Southwestern University at Memphis, which is today Rhodes College. In the spring of 1967, with Charles Cabbage and John Burrell Smith, he founded an organization called the Black Organizing Project in Memphis. Feeling that the mainstream civil rights movement was primarily geared to integrating the black upper class with white society, BOP took on the task of organizing the ghettos, particularly youth. In the Riverside neighborhood around Carver High School the name BOP was gradually replaced by The Invaders, and it would be this name that was spread by local media and which would be remembered. The Invaders marched for the Memphis sanitation workers in 1968, taught Black history classes in storefronts in North Memphis and South Memphis, marched with hospital strikers, and marched across Arkansas with Lance “Sweet Willie Wine” Watson in 1969. Although the media attempted to consistently link the Invaders to violence and hatred of whites, reporters rarely allowed the Invaders to rebut such charges, or to state what their organization stood for. At a time here in 2011 when the rights of union members and sanitation workers in Memphis are under attack from politicians, it is important for Memphians to remember the lost legacy of The Invaders. 

At the All-Purple Block Party and video shoot on Woodlawn Street in North Memphis last Saturday, May 14, 2011, featuring the Trigga Squad.