In an otherwise carefully crafted State of the City address that was full of symbolism and substance, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland included one line that may have caused more confusion than clarity.

The Tennessee Republican Party must find the political courage to move the Nathan Bedford Forrest bust – a blatant symbol of Tennessee’s shameful history – out of the Capitol rotunda and into the museum, and replace it with a hero that is more representative of all Tennesseans. 

If history is any guide, the new Memphis Express professional football franchise will do fine. The big question concerns the league, the new eight-team Alliance of American Football.

Despicable behavior isn’t new, people at their worst doing what they do because they can. What’s new is the lack of national outrage, the shrugging of our national shoulders, a coast-to-coast “so what.”

Jamie Woodson is stepping down as CEO of the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) after eight years. Woodson says there’s still much more to do for students in Tennessee.

People talk about school choice. But school choice doesn’t truly exist if parents don’t have access to good schools. There is a solution that can help: unified enrollment.

On the 50-mile drive over to Brownsville, Marsha Thompson told us a story.

The 10 women honored with Luminary Award medals this year represent the diversity, racially and otherwise, that makes Memphis a cool place in which to live.

Over the past two centuries, presidents almost always have become more effective and less influential during their first two years in office. President Donald Trump has defied these patterns.

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris calls on the University of Memphis and Shelby County Schools to lead the way on higher minimum wages. 

Who exactly is driving the opaque process by which the Office of Planning and Development amends the UDC, and what does it mean for a city struggling to attract and retain people and businesses?

Historian Jimmy Ogle has an encyclopedic knowledge of Memphis – and he generously shares it with anyone he thinks might want to know. As he prepares to move closer to family, he's leaving us with what he calls his "bicentennial gift": a farewell storytelling series.

"Big Mo" – as in Momentum – is a nickname that just might stick. And as Mayor Jim Strickland makes his re-election bid, he would be wise to embrace it.

Legalizing sports betting could ultimately mean more buses, more drivers, more frequent service, more routes and more shelters for waiting passengers in Memphis and Shelby County.

Mike Lupfer wore many hats: University of Memphis professor, leader, world traveler – and most of all, friend.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee reflects on the significance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Mentors can have powerful and lasting positive effects on children, showing them what hope looks like before they turn to a life of violent crime.

Gov. Bill Haslam's highly-publicized and celebrated decision granting full clemency to Cyntoia Brown is indicative of how he has governed during his two terms: a compassionate conservative moved simply by the desire to do the right thing.

“In the entire history of girls’ high school basketball in Tennessee, no one had ever seen a uterus lying on a basketball court.”

CLAIMING OUR ISLAND. I said I’d start the year with a couple of ideas.

Ernest Withers aimed his camera through a bramble of twisting oak limbs, sharpening his focus on a home atop a small hill.

First, let me say I’m pretty much all for development, especially in the Memphis city core, but I think the massive Union Row project demonstrates an inequity in the development process that we need to examine. The beauty of this problem, however, is the solution would have a positive impact, helping create new small “infill” development across Memphis in neighborhoods that might otherwise be ignored.

Michael Nelson offers his take on sports betting in Tennessee; the Mississippi governor's race; and why Lamar Alexander and Marsha Blackburn face some interesting times in Washington.

After putting the kibosh on rumors about his political future, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen is making a rather bold prediction of his own.

Again and again, prior to the launch of The Daily Memphian, people would say to me, “You’ve got to have obituaries.”