This story has been republished with permission from The Institute for Public Service Reporting. Read the original story here. Emmitt Martin seethed with anger the night he and four other Memphis Police Department officers allegedly beat Tyre Nichols to death. “I was seeing red,’’ he said last month while testifying...

I’ve written before about MLK50: Justice Through Journalism’s approach to writing about poverty: We investigate it as though it were a crime. Poverty doesn’t just happen to people; it’s often man-made and intentional. Part of our mission is to hold those responsible for creating poverty in Memphis accountable for their actions.

There’s only been one in-depth effort in recent years to provide the Memphis Area Transit Authority with a dedicated funding source and it came from an unusual place: Outside city government. Through months of planning and advocacy, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris pushed in 2019 for a “sustainability fee”...

The Board of the Memphis Area Transit Authority voted last month to take its operating budget from the $85 million needed to continue current operations to a new budget of $67.8 million, reflecting the actual revenues it expects to receive. The readjustment revealed how MATA has operated beyond its means...

The other day, I was talking with our enterprise reporter, Mike Finch, who, along with government accountability reporter Katherine Burgess, has sat in on the ongoing federal trial of the officers charged in the beating death of Tyre Nichols. There’s much in the day-to-day of a trial that’s boring and...

The city of Memphis is not releasing funding budgeted for the Memphis Area Transit Authority in a timely manner, said Hamish Davidson, an external auditor hired to work as interim chief financial officer for the transit agency. Davidson described the situation to the MATA Board Tuesday, just minutes before the...

As the remnants of Hurricane Francine brought high winds and rain into Memphis on Sept. 12, Kema Mosby waited at the bus stop a few blocks from her South Memphis home. The 40 – Stage & Lauderdale bus arrived on time, around 5:57 a.m. From there, she rode to...

Beto Sanchez, 27, started his lunch break, opened his phone and saw, to his shock, that he and his co-workers at Starbucks had lost a United States Supreme Court case. As his phone vibrated with texts from lawyers and friends, the irony of the situation sank in. “I’m generating revenue...

This story has been republished with permission from Tennessee Lookout Read the original story here. Shelby County continues to experience one of the highest HIV rates in the nation – designated one of 48 “hotspots” that are collectively responsible for half of all new U.S. infections. Despite...

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is an award-winning nonprofit digital news site based in Memphis, Tennessee. Our work focuses on the intersection of poverty, power and policy. We examine the systems that make it hard for workers to make ends meet and interrogate those who profit from the status quo. Our goal is to help Memphians — especially workers — have enough resources to thrive and demand that public and private policy support their success. We strive for our newsroom culture to reflect the values we prize: community, accountability, courage and justice.

My colleague, my friend and MLK50’s visuals editor, Andrea Morales, is what you’d call a soulful person. She feels things deeply. She was born in Peru and grew up in Miami, but I could make an argument that — because of her passion and her heart — her true hometown is Memphis.

It was the late great Audre Lorde who said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”. That’s a guiding idea at MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. We know that to do the work we need to do, we have to take care of ourselves as we care for the community.

In 1971, Black communist writer, activist and political prisoner George Jackson reflected on how those caged in U.S. prisons and jails could spark a mass movement for social change. He wrote in his book “Blood In My Eye” that “the sheer numbers of the prisoner class and the terms of their existence make them a mighty reservoir of revolutionary potential.” Shortly after finishing that book, Jackson was killed by guards at San Quentin State Prison in California. In the decades since, Black prisoners, activists and thinkers have commemorated Black resistance against state violence through the Black August tradition.

As he faces an effort to oust him from office, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy has been accused of, among other things, offering too many plea deals and dismissing too many cases. In public comments, opinion pieces and on social media, critics — often associated with the Republican Party of Shelby County and State Sen. Brent Taylor — have used individual cases to argue that the DA gives a “mere slap on the wrist” to people who commit property crimes and that his office has a “‘record amount’ of dismissals.”

In the first week of August, Brian Harris’ office was littered with cardboard boxes. A giant stack obscured the corner opposite his desk; among other things, the pile included a refrigerator, an air fryer, and women’s sanitary products. These were dorm supplies, Harris explained. A few weeks earlier,...

One day last fall, Bryant Woods’ rotted-out flooring opened up beneath his 11-year-old daughter. Major leaks in the rental home had allowed mold to thrive and rot to set in. In the winters, he was forced to use space heaters or his electric oven to stay warm since the heat didn’t work.

With the growth of institutional mega-landlords in Memphis, many have worried about how they would treat their tenants and their properties. But these concerns may have missed the main point, according to new research from Austin Harrison, assistant professor at Rhodes College, and researchers at Georgia State University. The bigger...

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism has been awarded a three-year, $1 million general operating grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to increase its editorial, operational and business strength and capacity. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “supports creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building...

Inside a small, mural-covered building just outside Indianola, Mississippi, 14-year-old Tamorris Carter made the rounds, bouncing lightly on his heels. He stopped frequently to explain objects of interest; pictures of class field trips to civil rights monuments, or a poster he made on “social dominance orientation,” a term that describes one’s tolerance for social inequality. Even in moments of pause, Tamorris found a way to remain in motion. He would smooth down the cap on his head, lean forward to pinch the bubbles of a rainbow-printed fidget toy, and trace the words of his poster.

Community organizer Chelsea Glass died Sunday from a rare lung disease. Glass was the lead organizer for DeCarcerate Memphis, an organization formed in response to “Operation LeGend,” the Department of Justice’s initiative that brought more federal agents to Memphis. Glass was also instrumental in leading the advocacy to pass ordinances reforming policing after Tyre Nichols’ beating death by Memphis Police Department officers. Glass was married and the mother of two boys. You can support them here.