Notable Black Memphians By Miriam DeCosta-Willis

Churches, civic clubs, and political organizations united in support of the direct action campaign, which was led by the Memphis Branch of the NAACP under the direction of Maxine A. Smith, who was named executive secretary of the branch in 1962. She helped desegregate Memphis schools in 1961, organized an eighteen-month boycott of downtown stores, and led demonstrations against the Board of Education in 1969. One of the pivotal events in the struggle was the 1967 strike by sanitation workers, led by labor leader T. O. Jones, which ended with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis on April 4, 1968. One of the other key figures in the local movement was Jesse H. Turner, an accountant and CEO of Tri-State Bank, who served as president of the Memphis Branch of the NAACP for eleven years, initiated a suit against the public library, and filed the first lawsuit to end segregation in Shelby County in 1957.

In Memphis, the struggle for civil rights and the quest for political power were concurrent in the 1960s, when civil rights leaders such as Smith, Turner, Willis, Lockard, Hooks, Sugarmon, and others were elected to public office. For example, when Turner was elected to the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee in 1960, he became the first Black elected to such an office since Reconstruction. In 1964, Lockard won election to the Shelby County Quarterly Court, Hooks was appointed to the Shelby County Criminal Court, and Willis became the first African American elected to the Tennessee General Assembly since Reconstruction. The foundation for these political victories was laid in the 1950s, when organizations such as the Lincoln League, Council of Civic Clubs, Shelby County Democratic Club, and local branch of the NAACP launched vigorous voter registration campaigns and the political clubs supported Black candidates for public office.

Although they had little chance of winning election in a city where political banners read “Keep Memphis Down in Dixie,” Black Memphians began to campaign for public office in the early 1950s. In 1951, Dr. J. E. Walker was defeated in his race for the Memphis Board of Education, but he helped organized the Nonpartisan Voters’ Registration Club, which increased the number of Black registered voters to 35,000.