“The Making of a Hero” is a series of stories marking the centennial of Tom Lee’s 1925 Mississippi River rescue that saved the lives of 32 passengers on the capsized M.E. Norman riverboat.

Tom Lee lived in complicated and violent times when segregation was rigidly enforced in a city with a Black population that was 40% of the city’s total, yet only white people were elected at every level of government.

Yet it was E. H. Crump — who left the mayor’s office in 1915 and dominated city politics for the first half of the 20th century — who made Lee the example of “a very worthy Negro.” 

Without Crump’s permission, Lee’s house in North Memphis — paid for, including annual taxes, by the Memphis Engineers Club — and his city job as a garbage collector would not have been allowed.

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