Undeserving Memphis leaders receiving Freedom Award tarnishes Dr. King's legacy | Opinion

The National Civil Rights Museum’s Freedom Award is “given annually to individuals who have made significant contributions to civil and human rights.”

It seems that being a wealthy white benefactor is also a category.

A year before he was killed, Dr. King mused that his dream had “in many points turned into a nightmare,” as the United States resisted progress that cost anything. Now, 54 years after his untimely murder, the National Civil Rights Museum’s board has voted to award the founder of FedEx, Fred Smith, with an award in Dr. King’s name.

The majority of FedEx’s political contributions over the past election cycles were to Republican candidates and the Republican Party. After Donald Trump won the presidency in 2018, FedEx donated $500,000 to his inauguration ceremony.

Fred Smith, himself, donated, almost $300,000 in 2020 to the Republican Party including Senator Mitch McConnell. Notoriously anti-Black candidates such as Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz have also received donations from the organization and its leadership.

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Smith’s award is not without precedence

In 2018, former NCRM board chair, Pitt Hyde, was recognized as well. Hyde’s corporation, AutoZone, was one of a handful of organizations that received daily reports on the personal lives and activities of Memphis activists in 2017 and 2018 while they were being surveilled by the Memphis Police Department.

While FedEx and AutoZone have made significant financial contributions to Memphis and NCRM, their work does not qualify as the freedom kind.

The night before being assassinated at the Lorraine Motel, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to an assembly of mostly Black Memphians at Mason Temple in Memphis. In that speech, Dr. King encouraged Black Memphians to “develop a dangerous unselfishness,” in the fight for economic equality but sadly with his death less than 24 hours later, that call went unheeded.

Most people remember this speech for Dr. King’s chilling delivery and prescient awareness of his impending death. However, within the text of the 40-minute speech, Dr. King spends significant time addressing the reason for his return to Memphis.

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Honoring Dr. King's full legacy

Memphis and the Sanitation Strike were becoming ground zero for the economic focus of Dr. King’s movement. He holds little back as he addresses the white leaders of the city and their commitment to economic and racial segregation. It would have been simple for Dr. King to focus solely on Mayor Loeb’s political ideology, but he takes a large step further, and calls for an economic boycott of the largest corporations in the city.

“Tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis,’ King said, adding Sealtest, Wonder Bread, and Hart Bread to the list. “We are choosing these companies because they haven’t been fair in their hiring processes,” he justifies. He tells the audience to take their money out of white banks and invest in the then Black owned Tri-State Bank and to buy their insurance from the city’s Black insurance companies.

Many scholars consider this speech to be a vociferous shift for King as he rejects the absence of progress and embraces the goal of economic security and equality for Black Americans. If speaking in the present, Dr. King likely would have named AutoZone and FedEx, Truist and International Paper. An award recognizing the leaders of these organizations would not have been on his agenda.

As Memphis continues to grapple with economic inequality highlighted by debilitating poverty and one of the largest racial wealth gaps in the United States, it is time for Black people to demand the kind of change that costs something.

Awarding the wealthiest white men in Memphis with Freedom Awards is not the dream Dr. King had. It placates the legacy of Dr. King and celebrates an absence of progress that Dr. King warned against shortly before his death. There are people risking their lives and livelihood for economic and racial equality in Memphis who deserve to be recognized. They cannot write large checks but their work deserves to be recognized as part of Dr. King’s mountaintop.

Tami Sawyer is senior DEI program manager for Amazon Transportation Services Tech and a former Shelby County commissioner.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Opinion: Freedom Award recipients must be purveyors of MLK's legacy