Note: This post is written by David Ciscel, professor emeritus of economics at University of Memphis, where he taught for 30 years. He is also the author of authoritative articles on labor economics and sprawl.
By David Ciscel
I passed my bookcase the other day and noticed Wanda Rushing’s 2009 classic “Memphis and the Paradox of Place.” She begins the book by saying:
Memphis occupies a unique status as a distribution center in the global economy, but the city continues to struggle with social and economic inequalities as well as its collective identity.
The rich cultural tradition of the region is certainly the starting point for any review of today’s Memphis economy. The movement of rural people (white and black) brought a ready labor force to the city, and it also brought a diverse mix of living styles, music and food. Memphis is famous for its country, soul, country and rock’n’roll music. Surprisingly it also has a tradition of classical music, opera and dance. While famous for its pork barbeque, inside the city residents are able to enjoy a variety of cuisines from soul food, Italian food, and meat-and-threes to fine dining.
Memphis is probably the key transshipment city (or entrepôt) in the United States. Today, it is the headquarters of FedEx. But railroads, the river and highways have long been the vehicles for taking the produce of the South to the North and the return of finished products from the manufacturing centers of the world. For many years, Memphis had a large assembly manufacturing base, from buggies and cars to agricultural implements. Today, warehouses and medical research (an unlikely combination) lead the city into the middle of twenty-first century.
But the city is also a study in paradoxes. It is a city that often leads the nation in poverty, but, at the same time, the cost of living is far more manageable in Memphis than in other metropolitan areas. The city’s logistics, warehouses, and trucking/railroads companies are generally very high tech. Medical research continues to be a strong suite. But these industries are slowly saving labor, and upskilling in a town of semi-skilled labor, resulting in slow labor force growth and a stagnant population.
Black residents have had a difficult history in Memphis. Moving from rural farm labor, they often found a lack of educational and employment opportunities in the city. Racism was rampant even though the ‘vote’ was not formally taken away as in most of the Jim Crow South. As a result, many Black (and probably many white) workers continued their migrations north to St. Louis or Chicago. As the freedom movement succeeded across the U.S. (and as Memphis became notorious for the assassination of MLK Jr.), white Memphians rushed to suburbs, leaving the actual City of Memphis behind. But the white flight had a strange unintended side effect. The core city became the center of Black political power in West Tennessee, controlling the future of the region including parts of north Mississippi and east Arkansas. Meanwhile, white residents control meaningless suburban towns that have the sole benefit of the region’s high-quality public schools.
So, just what are we left with here in Memphis? It remains a place of paradoxes. It is an easy city to enjoy if you are affluent. The core city is easy to get around – despite its lack of a real public transportation system – while the sprawling suburbs are increasingly a massive traffic jam as all movement depends on the automobile.
With all of its problems and inequalities, Memphis remains a vibrant region if you focus on the transportation and medical services industries. Transshipment has made us what we were in the past and will probably dominate what we become in the future.
Despite the arguments for and against the city, we still face the existential question: Is Memphis really a place or just a gas station on the Interstate of life?
