Some 20-plus announcements have been made recently about economic development in the greater Memphis area totaling some $6.6 billion in investment.

Just one of those announcements delivered $5.6 billion of that in a Ford F-150 pickup last week. An electric F-150 Lightning to be exact.

Conaway: ‘You’re wrong about that’

We drove that truck. And it was driven here by data about the people and the promise of Memphis and West Tennessee.

The white male power structure — the structure so desperately trying to hold on to that power in the face of change, so desperately trying to keep minorities in their place even as those minorities have become the majority in these parts — didn’t drive this decision.

To give him credit, our good-looking, good ole boy Governor Bill Lee — bless his heart — did ride shotgun in the truck with $500 million worth of state infrastructure support and a new training facility in his pocket for the project, but he was passenger, not driver. Bob Rolfe, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development, gets credit too. He was in the back seat (the Ford-150 Lightning has a back seat) putting his team to work to help get this truck.

But that $500 million has been long in coming to West Tennessee where our supposed Memphis Regional Megasite was anything but for so long, languishing over here while the good ole boys in Nashville ­— and they are mostly boys — fawned over building Saturns in Middle Tennessee and Volkswagens in East Tennessee.

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That $500 million is less than 10% of what Ford and their battery partners are about to spend building in Haywood County, just a couple of counties east of Shelby. A serious West Tennessee focus by the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development was also long overdue.

Ford called Tennessee. Tennessee didn’t call them.

To give them no credit at all, our two Tennessee senators, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, were not even in this electric truck. They’re on the side of the road to clean energy, bystanders at best. Both have not only voted against every green initiative that’s come along, they’ve ranted against every green initiative that’s come along. They’re not only in denial about climate change, they’re in denial about science and progress in general.

Make no mistake, our Republican Congressman David Kustoff is with them. Right after this announcement was made, his office put out a laughingly ironic statement all but claiming to have sat at Bill Lee’s elbow to make this happen. The last thing David Kustoff did that was remotely progressive was sit somewhere near Jim Strickland when they were law partners.

Even Ford — the folks who revolutionized transportation and manufacturing with the invention of the assembly line and the Model-T fossil-fueled automobile — has recognized that it’s time to move on from fossil fuel and advance another revolution, and they’ll be doing it here starting in 2025.

Conaway: The Tasteful List 2021

Dinosaurs like Blackburn, Hagerty and Kustoff are standing still if not backing up, and in danger of becoming fossils themselves.

Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Co., acknowledged coming full circle with Memphis and our participation in the original revolution. Ford made Model-Ts here starting in 1913 in the building that later housed The Commercial Appeal on Union, and Ford had a presence in the city until the 1950s.

The new manufacturing site is named Blue Oval City after the iconic Ford logo and it will be three times larger than their current flagship Ford Rouge Factory in Dearborn, Michigan. Six square miles of Haywood County just outside Stanton and Brownsville are involved and will also include electric battery manufacturing by South Korea-based SK Innovation. Governor Lee also announced a Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT) facility will open on the site to provide high-quality training focusing on electric vehicle and battery manufacturing.

Ford will employ about 5,800 and sources estimate the average — average — income will exceed $50,000 a year. The reliable employee multiplier from SK and other supply chain and related businesses is four to five times. In other words, we’re looking at from 23,000 to 29,000 new jobs just down the road.

In a story last week, my colleague Rob Moore quoted Ford president and CEO Jim Farley saying, “Blue Oval City will be the biggest auto manufacturing (site) in our 118-year history. It will also be the cleanest and most efficient. It will produce electric vehicles on a scale we couldn’t have even imagined 10 years ago.”

Conaway: Going right back out there anyway

Folks, this is transformative, generational, revolutionary change.

Now, back to the data about the people and promise of Memphis and West Tennessee that drove this truck here.

Ford did its homework, and the homework showed that greater Memphis at 1.2 million is #1 among U.S. cities over a million for IT talent, resources, and diversity — the #1 opportunity pool for Ford to reach its goals.

Further, sources tell me a third-party independent study told Ford that they’d find at least as good or better a labor force waiting in West Tennessee than Volkswagen found in East Tennessee, or Toyota found in Mississippi, or Mercedes found in Alabama.

And still further, the city and its environs seem to be perfectly situated to grow and innovate in logistics and transportation, medical technology, agriculture technology, and electric vehicle and battery powered technology.

Conaway: People taught, people touched, people who will remember

River, road, rail, runway, renewal, revolution — baby — and rock ‘n’ roll.

The Memphis Regional Chamber’s chief economic development officer Ted Townsend, and the chambers in our suburbs, and the Jackson, Tennessee chamber under Kyle Spurgeon, and Covington-based HTL Advantage under Mark Herbison representing Haywood, Tipton and Lauderdale counties all had their act together and their facts at the ready. That coordinated effort and those facts beat the competition like a rented mule.

Last Thursday, Sept. 30, the Chamber announced the formation of the Center for Economic Competitiveness, focusing on leveraging data to align regional partners around key initiatives. “Laser focused on driving prosperity for all,” according to Chamber president and CEO Beverly Robertson. “To do so we must use data generated to understand where we are today, where we need to go and coalesce individuals and community partners to help shape solutions to long-standing problems.” 

Short translation, “Ford.”

This deal wasn’t done in back rooms, or over drinks in country clubs, or by a few on raised columned porches looking down on the many those few think they know better than and are above by right. And Ford certainly isn’t making the largest manufacturing investment in Tennessee in history because of the forward thinking of the regressive majority of our state Legislature and U.S. congressional delegation. That bunch thinks a battery powered truck is something kids play with on the living room floor around the tree on Christmas morning in, say, 1958.

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This deal was done by data, data that proves that we — all of us over here in West Tennessee — deserve the shot and are worth the bet.

People next door to Blue Oval City have watched their population decline since the Civil War, their cotton-based world producing slim pickings in challenged communities. But the world has heard from them before. Henning gave the world Alex Haley and Roots. Nutbush gave the world the Queen of Rock, Tina Turner.

The neighborhood is about to give the world a brand-new way to get to work.

All of that found me and Beverly Robertson whooping and hollering on the phone right before I started this column. Bev is the Black female head of the Memphis Regional Chamber, heretofore a bastion of white male leadership. Full disclosure: Bev and I have been friends for a very long time, and waiting for somebody from somewhere else with chops like Ford to say all of that for a very long time.

We are better than we think we are, better than what we’ve been told, and we deserve better than we’ve been getting.

Farley also said, “These trucks will be a joy to drive. They’re quiet. They’re smooth as Tennessee Whiskey.” 

I’m a Memphian, and I believe I’ll stop writing this now, and pour a little of that.