The city’s image and its reality, 200 years after its founding sometimes part company in how the narrative of Memphis is told.

There is never a day a child can’t be made to smile with a small doll after a visit to the doctor at Church Health that may have seemed scary. 

The children at Perea are taught that if they come across a gun, they are to “Stop, don’t touch, turn around, tell an adult.” The sad fact is that many of them can already tell the teacher exactly where the guns in their houses are hidden.