Long as Winchester

Marcus Winchester, the first mayor of Memphis, is buried under a municipal parking garage. His first wife, Marie, is likely there, as well. 

James Winchester, John Overton, and Andrew Jackson bought a chunk of land in the Chickasaw grounds north of Mississippi in 1819, a year after Jackson and Isaac Shelby brokered the one sided arrangement for the U.S. with the Chickasaw. The plan was to start a town on the well appointed bluffs and then make money chopping up the land and selling it. Jackson set to work removing the residents and made the Trail of Tears one of his signature legacies as president.   

On one of his trips to New Orleans, James’ first son, Marcus, met a sixteen year old Marie Amarante. She “had African blood” and their love was illegal in her hometown of St. Louis so he moved her to Memphis where he was postmaster, store proprietor, and mayor. Since their love was barely legal in Tennessee, she had to live in a separate house he sold her at the corner of Jackson and Main. She had ten children and passed away. Marcus then went on to marry a 19 year old widow and lived and did things for awhile before being buried in Winchester Cemetery, which is now a park. Most of the bodies were moved to Elmwood but not that of Marcus and a few unknown others for the city built a place to park cars on top of their graves. 

This story follows the path of the road named after the Winchesters. It is famously long and a east-west route across the southern half of the city.  

 The road starts, or ends, depending on where you begin, in T.O. Fuller State Park and the old settlement of Chucalisa. The trail from Mitchell to Chucalisa runs through a magical stretch of forest. Time spent there is time spent well. 

Mitchell Road marks a northern boundary of Boxtown, a community that started in 1863.

There is something to the land in the area that one can find deepest connections to the earth. 

“Growing up down there definitely makes you see things in a different perspective. It’s a beautiful neighborhood surrounded by so much wildlife, vibrantly colored plants, bobcats deer, hummimg birds. Most of the people there are family and they are old fashioned. I learned how to garden and landscape which keeps me in nature, which keeps me grounded.

As an artist I wear my hair nappy to represent the beauty i see in the wild growth around there it’s so peaceful so i get alot of good practice in so i gues you can say growing up in boxtown kinda helped me find my artistic vision.”  Dutch Malone, a Boxtown native, explained over the phone.

It’s also Black land, therefore society does not mind throwing the trash where folks won’t look. The sewage treatment plant, the old steam plant and all its coal ash, an oil refinery, and more all were put in and around the community. There is little in investment from the city on human services, despite being one of its oldest communities, Boxtown residents were some of the last to receive running water and power.  

The fight over the Byhalia pipeline found its nexus in the Boxtown. I had the fortune of being at Weaver Park during a rally in which Mr. Robinson sang from the true soul of the land. It is through his property that they wanted to run the oil. Al Gore came for a rally hosted by Memphis Community Against the Pipeline. Clyde Robinson started in a quiet and kind tone thanking everyone, including the custodians, and ditch diggers, and tree trimmers for coming out. He then thanks the political representatives who came out, almost forgetting his long time friend, Dr. Edmund Ford. It seemed he was eager to finish speaking. He was there for a purpose that was to be a voice for all those being threatened by those who would, as he said, “mean to do wrong.” Every person present could feel it before he finished the first lines of “There’s a storm over the ocean”. 

Boxtown’s eastern neighbor is Whitehaven. Colonel Francis White built White’s Station as a stop for the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad in the early 1850s. The original Highway 51 was opened in 1852 and the first trains came through in 1856. It served the plantations in the area well. After the war, it would remain a small town of white people while former slaves moved to nearby Boxtown, Memphis, and elsewhere. In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, Whitehaven grew as an early suburb of Memphis, growning 10 fold in population from 1950 to 1960. Whitehaven was integrated in the 1960s and annexed by Memphis in 1970. White people moved east. 

One can see the history of the cycle of annexation and expansion in all aspects of Memphis heading east down Winchester. 

Cedric “Richhie” Killebrew and I  spent an afternoon driving from Hickory Hill to Third and back talking about life, snapping up, avoiding the police, and enjoying ourselves.

We have known each other since 2010 when I taught him Algebra One for a semester at City University School of Liberal Arts, a charter school housed, at the time, in the old Dunn Avenue Elementary. Richhie has been jooking since high school and a part of the reason we have stayed connected. While I don’t jook….yet, I have been a fan of the dance since seeing ealy YouTube videos from Crystal Palace.

No place in Memphis history generates the response that the skating rink that opened in 1981 on the corner of Mitchell and Third does. If you want to see people talk about culture and this city with real fondness, mention the Crystal Palace. 

I asked Tarrik “U Dig” Moore about it; he immediately lit up and started the “Get Buck!” chorus. Tarrik helped lead Memphis jookin from street expression to internationally recognized art and cultural phenomenon. His story of how he came to the dance form runs parallel to many Memphis jookers. Someone in their family did it, Michael Jackson, and the skating ring.

“I came from Oakhaven.

My big  cousin was doing it up at my aunties house in Frayser and I was always a Michael Jackson moving mf’er.

Then I went to The Crystal Palace and that place was the Mecca. They would stop the skating and everybody would gangsta walk around the ring….and they always played the Hokey Pokey for some reason.”  

The skating ring shutdown, Christ Community now owns the property. I called them up and spoke with Claude Bynum about their plans and about the past. They are getting ready to build a nice new building in the parking lot. They have are still figuring the old building out. 

“Why did it close?” 

“You can do a million dollars worth of good and a hundred dollars of bad and the bad will outshine everytime.” Mr. Bynum has a musical voice that adds much to simplest of statements. The stigmas and realities of violence runs loud and deep down Winchester. 

“I had my first performance at Crystal Palace.” Cedric recalled at the other end of the drive while we skated in the Teeny Lot, another spot that is crucial in jookin history. 

 “It was nothing but some choreo, but it was packed in there.” 

Here the road is named after the Winchesters, a buckjump or two east of Third. 

From Third to Mendenhall or so, tire and alignment shops line the road on either side. 

Richhie and I talked as we bounced along the road and navigated Memphis traffic. Going straight down a straight street is not an option. Something that you may likely have never seen before but are not surprised is there will be there along the way. 

Cedric grew up in Chicago but moved here when he was 5. They stayed off Germantown and Winhester. His father was a district manager for Stride Rite, the neighborhood was nice, and both Hickory Ridge and Mall of Memphis were close.

“My father danced and my parents kind of made me do it.”

Like mine, and probably yours, his parents split up, the neighborhood changed, malls shutdown, and his life followed the unstable and chaotic one so many of his peers in this city share. The clear path to having a good job and being a family man does not exist for Black males growing up in Memphis. Later, in high school, he broke an ankle, “I tried to get away from it but realized that it was my gift.”

“Dancing is what carried me through.” he explained. “I wouldn’t have had the experience or been able to do what I have it weren’t for dance.” 

“How is jookin different from dance?”

“Jookin has to be in you.” 

“So, not just anyone can jook?”

“Hell naw.”

“Can anyone learn it?”

“Most definitely.”

U Dig Dance Academy was the first Memphis Jookin school. Tarrik Moore, Marico “Dr. Rico” Flake and Daniel Price developed a curriculum around the dance and gave it structure in the form of the Jook Book. Doing so was a major step for preventing it from being appropriated as has happened to much of the creative brilliance from the Black community around here. Many of the jookers bringing regional and global recognition to their art were U Dig students. Richhie was one.

What is your mission with jookin now?

“It’s already done buddy.”

“What is?”

“We have developed the Memphis Jookin Arts and Entertainment industry with a group of small businesses that share a common thread. We have the arts and entertainment and we have an economic engine that just needs fueled.” 

“Which is?”

“Engagement, for most people. We also need like minded investors.  Seeing development of Stax and Crosstown shows how the landscape is changing.” 

During the high sun on a triple digit solstice day, Justin Ford and I stood outside of his father’s funeral home and talked life.

“Winchester is a bad boy.”

He runs his own funeral home down off Knight Arnold and Mendenhall so goes up and down the road every day and is one of many in Memphis who can tell a long history of what everywhere was.  His father, Joe Ford, started the Winchester space in 2009. The building was originally a pizza place, the most recent tenants ran a car lot. 

“I can stand out here and see people I know all day.” He said as he waved at a car that honked as it passed.

“What do we need to do so that you are not burying so many children?”

“The number one thing is that we need to be respectful of one another. Treat everyone like you want to be treated at all times.”

The Check-In Coffee truck is based out of 1798 Winchester Road, a lot with a building that was a Pizza Hut and then a Jack Pirtle’s Chicken. Keedran Franklin owns the property and runs the truck. He is one of Memphis fiercest fighters for equality and is trying to build a sustainable approach to his efforts through his community enterprise at The Check-In. He also makes a gator and waffles that my son thinks is one of the best things on the planet. 

“How are you checking in?” 

Here is a space to answer that question honestly. On more than one occasion, I have checked in at a low and left with an Elevated Experience, never the other way around.

Just to the east and across the street is Rusty’s Taste of Chicago. It is an aptly named establishment and a place to get to if you are jonesing for Chicago dogs and Italian beef sandwiches. 

Whitehaven’s eastern border is Airways. At the intersection of Airways and Winchester, Winchester jogs, splits, goes under, to and from the airport.

The Memphis Municipal Airport opened in 1929. 7 miles southeast of downtown in an area with plenty of open land to grow. The Army took over operations during World War II to send troops and planes to all points needed. The Army gave the airport back in 1947. A beautiful new terminal was built in 1963. It became an International Airport in 1969. 

In 1973, Federal Express built a package sorting facility on the airfield.  From 1993 to 2009, Memphis International was the busiest cargo airport in the world. The World Hub is responsible for about 99% of the cargo coming through. In 2018, the airport had a $19 billion impact on the city and supported 83,000 jobs. 2491 Winchester is the engine bay of the city’s economy. 

. Memphis was started as a shipping town. Slaves were shipped in, they cleared the land and planted the fields so hardwoods and cotton were shipped out.

It has remained such and nothing suggests it changing. 

Across from the airport, at the corner of Lake Park Drive and Winchester is just one of many abandoned apartment complexes, each fit for a Walking Dead set. Cedric had done some work on them years ago with demolition removal. 

“We were taking out tubs and stuff, like this one.” He jumped up on one laying on the ground. “This place used to be nice.”

Looking west, one can see part of the SuperHub in the background.

“I’m not gonna pay a bunch of racist assholes under the table.” Dennis Scott, owner of Denim and Diamonds told DJ Howard Kew as the club became a target of the city to be shutdown. 

Kew and I talked on the phone one evening about the club, Scott, and music. Disc Jockeys are storytellers and historians. Dennis, Howard explained, knew how to manage personalities and put people in positions to succeed. He bought a floundering western club at Winchester and Mendenhall and made it a place of Memphis legend by recognizing and catering to the community that was in flux.
At Denim and Diamond’s height, more than 3,000 people may come through on a SundaySoul night hosted by DJ Howard Q. 

Dennis was a New Jersey Sicilian who refused to play by the good old boy rules. The “racist assholes” ended up getting his club shutdown through environmental court but Scott returned the favor by making the city pay the remaining five years on the lease.

“What’s your favorite part of the job?

“Creating something new every day.”   

“Yes sirski.” Richhie agreed while I nodded. 

Clifton “Bud” Gurley’s father started the landscaping business over 60 years ago off Hernando but moved to the present location of Gurley’s Azalea Gardens on Winchester in the late 1970s. 

“There was an open air market down at the corner of Riverdale. 

The property across the street was going to be an amusement park and more. There was 60000 people at the opening of the market. 

We had supplied house plants and got this property.” 

“What’s changed?”

“Shoot..there was the mall, and then the Target,….

“What hasn’t?”

“We’re still here…and Tops.”

“I saw someone get carjacked and shot in the parking lot of the Mall when I was a kid. I was waiting on my dad and he happened as close as that tree was.” He pointed to a tree in the median where the road waggles under the airport.

“That must have been traumatic.”

“It really was. I couldn’t make back to Hickory Ridge for some years. 

We ended up at the mall as he directed me toward the Teeny Lot, a parking lot on the eastern edge of Hickory Ridge. I got out the car and looked around for a minute and then Ced came gliding around on a pair or roller skates. The lot is a large stretch of the smooth concrete. Perfect for skating and sliding. I had a pair of rollerblades for some reason and so we spent the encroaching dusk skating around and enjoying life. 

The Saturday following our drive, Famous Amos held the Second Annual I Bet You Won’t Stop The Violence event Cedric was to be performing along with a number of other artists in the parking lot of The Memphis Plaza, just east of the old mall. 

My son and I went out that way to enjoy some Good Cake and more.

D.G. an artist spoke to and for the spirit of the event, 

“There’s people like us trying to reach out and make a difference.

If we leave Memphis, we still have a problem in Memphis.

If everyone is running from the dark, who is the light?”

Frank Gotti, a leader in addressing the violence toward the people from without and within stated simply, “Can’t leave until I fix it.”

“There’s  no culture that way.” Cedric stated after we got back Just a few block east of here.

While our day and culture ended there, the road does not. I had previously made the drive from Germantown Road to the end when I cracked the screen to my phone and had it replaced at the repair shop out there. 

There is a lot of land devoted to golf courses and nice apartment complexes as well as the entrance to Fed Ex World Headquarters. The road goes a few more miles and then becomes no more in a field in eastern Shelby County. 

After Hickory Hill was annexed the suburban flight turned south and Desoto County exploded. Hernando DeSoto acted as a sword hand of a cruelest Satan, but that’s another story.

This one is about the flat circle down a straight line that Winchester Road is. The only way to break the cycle is to invest ourselves into it. 

Cedric and I have started a business of our array of side hustles and industriousness. Rich Hands Maintenance Crew is part of a dream in the making and just one of a multitude that start along Winchester and throughout this most beautiful land in the world. Far too few are made real. Why? 

Explaining is one thing but learning happens through the doing so to answer that, you have to make your way.