Memphis: Neighbors, Those Around Us



Willie Mitchell Blvd., South Memphis

Driving up Lauderdale Street on the south side of Memphis doesn’t strike any particular sensibilities. A wide north-south thoroughfare flanked by side streets of shade trees. Neat square front lawns and mostly one-story homes. We could have been in almost any suburb in the country.

Crossing Longview Drive brings you to Calvary Longview United Methodist Church and, a few hundred yards further, Longview Community Holiness Church. Then north of Person Avenue the road narrows. The sidewalks fill with weeds. Neat lawns and homes are replaced here and there by empty lots overtaken with crabgrass. The pavement along the cantered side streets lies cracked and patched-over. On one corner an abandoned house leans toward its inevitable defeat by the hands of time and the elements. On another stands a general store that may or may not have gone out of business. Parking lots and chain link fences and faded, cracking storefront signs begin to take over the landscape.

Yet there are also homes that show a resilient pride of the people who live here. People who are just a few minutes’ walk away from the saving graces of Mt. Sinai Baptist, Morning View Baptist, Greater Mt. Nebo Baptist, Carnegie Church of God-Christ, Mission Global Ministries, Christ Communion Church of God, Christ Missionary Baptist, Pearly Gates Baptist, Our Little Angels Thrift Store, the Southside Church of Christ and, on the far end of South Side Park, Mont Evers Cathedral Missionary Baptist.

Without warning Lauderdale Street became Willie Mitchell Boulevard. As we passed the Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church we saw that we were getting close to the address on the piece of paper resting on the dashboard.

A left turn on Olive Avenue (also known as Reverend Dr. Van Ford Jr. Road) brought us to Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church, Peter Rock Spiritual Church and the Temple of Praise Church. Up ahead, within a hundred yards of the intersection with Trigg Avenue, stood St. Thomas Catholic Church, New Kingdom Missionary Baptist Church, New Asia Baptist Church, and Church of God House of Prayer. Our stop was smack in the middle of it all.

We pulled over in front of a simple brick building. The word ROYAL was spelled out in cement high up on the two-story façade. The door underneath wore a colorful mural of (we figured) Willie Mitchell. From the gravel parking lot off of adjacent Richmond Avenue, in front of a wall painted forest green and fronted with tufts of grass and weeds, Lawrence ‘Boo’ Mitchell, Willie’s grandson, smiled and waved at us.

“Welcome to Memphis, gentlemen,” he said, giving us a round of enthusiastic handshakes. And there in a nondescript neighborhood in South Memphis we visited a small piece of American history - and befriended some of the everyday people who live there among the shaded streets, in the shadow of that history.