In police and prison culture, vulnerability has a bad rap. Not only are you not allowed to express your feelings (except anger), you are not allowed to even have feelings. But isn’t the capacity for tenderness what makes us human? 

Unlike other programs, the Leadership Memphis FastTrack program challenges young professionals and up-and-coming leaders to think outside of their normal scope, giving them a greater appreciation for diversity in culture, background, economics, community, industry and more.

Peel back the fancy ribbon-cutting ceremonies and press conferences for new jobs and all you’re left with is handouts to big, connected companies and higher taxes for the rest of us.

Companies want to locate in communities that will work with them long after the ribbon-cutting and headlines are done. We know that our local firms are constantly being courted by other communities looking to grow their economies.

There’s something wonderful about musical collaborations, both the totally unexpected and the so-perfect-together-they’re-completely-obvious.

In the late 1960s, African-American students at Memphis State would not settle for second-class citizenship, especially when they paid tuition like their white counterparts, and their parents’ tax dollars supported the institution like the parents of their white counterparts. So they organized.

As the 2019 city mayoral election starts to gain steam, there is little discussion about fighting violent crime, particularly by former mayor Willie Herenton and Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer, the two major opponents vying to unseat Jim Strickland.

Democratic presidential contenders will be all over this region in the months leading up to the Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi primaries. None of them has a prayer of winning electoral votes, but all three states will be sending delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.

I don’t want my kids taught your religion on my nickel anymore than you want them taught mine on yours. Neither of us has the right to send them to that private school with the other’s money.

'My insight on diversity had come from experience as the diverse candidate or double minority. My experience had come as a benefactor of diverse hiring initiatives that opened doors that would have otherwise been closed to someone like me.' 

A plan does not gentrify neighborhoods and displace existing residents. In fact, it seeks to provide the framework to avoid exactly that happening and to guide and coordinate investment so that it has broad-based benefit.

I took my 98- and 94-year-old parents to Disney. It was a magical trip, but not for the reasons you'd expect. 

The presidential campaign of 1968 was a last hurrah for the “Old Politics,” in which political machines and party leaders determined the major nominees. It also highlighted a “New Politics,” in which candidates took their cases to the people, through party primaries and modern technology.

'I volunteer and run for those who want to but say they can't, and for those who can't but wish they could.'

Consider the difference between a planned community such as Seaside, Florida, and an overdone Disney sequel. We can simply look to our neighbors in Nashville to see what an overdone sequel looks like in an urban environment.

When her husband was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, a woman who started her own business dropped everything to care for him and their three young daughters. Ten years later, the entrepreneurial spirit returned.

The horrors of the battle fought at Shiloh April 6-7, 1862, made it clear that the weaponry of war had far outstripped the Napoleonic-era tactics taught at West Point. 

When asked about Memphis, 55 percent nationally have a favorable opinion, up seven points since 2017. Among multicultural millennials, that favorability exceeds the national audience by 10 percentage points, up five since 2017.

As the story goes, FBI agents hired provocateurs to smash store windows and start a riot designed to embarrass King. A recent account includes civil rights photographer Ernest Withers in the plot, but there's no credible proof for the theories. 

In this week's Memphis 10: Johnny Football says farewell, Memphis comedy gets a showcase, and the city's future is as contested as ever.

The Rev. James Lawson, who invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis 51 years ago, will speak at Memphis Cares 2 on April 7 at Crump Stadium. The event recalls the first Memphis Cares, held three days after King's assassination.

Every three months or so, 50 people who comprise the MSCC board of directors file into a room for their quarterly meeting. They include law enforcement and criminal justice leaders as well as people from business, faith, nonprofit and grassroots sectors.

Playback Memphis was life-giving to this band of 14, who were “voluntold” to participate in what most would deem a crazy idea – bringing police officers together with those who had spent their lives running from them.

In Memphis, new immigrants make up just over 5 percent of the metro population, but account for 9 percent of the area's business owners.

With this entry, McKenzie Leaks was named an ambassador in the national Do the Write Thing Challenge, an anti-violence essay contest. Her essay was one of two chosen from 2,000 submitted by students from 16 schools in the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office Every Day in School program.