The Battle of Memphis: Church vs. Crump
by Chris Botkin

Robert R. Church (1839-1912) was born a slave. After the Civil War, he established himself as a businessman in Memphis, Tennessee.

Yellow fever killed more than 8,000 people in Memphis between 1867 and 1879, and caused many more to leave. When people abandoned the city during the yellow fever outbreaks, Robert R. Church stayed and bought their properties at pennies on the dollar. He owned bars, hotels, restaurants and real estate, and built Church Park and Auditorium on Beale Street; all, obviously, integrated.

Memphis' black community grew under Robert R. Church's entrepreneurial leadership, and he became the first black millionaire from the South. This was the uniquely friendly environment blacks enjoyed in Memphis when W.C. Handy moved there in 1909.

That year, E.H. Crump won election to the Memphis City Council, beginning 45 years of his domination of Memphis politics. Crump, a Democrat, was corrupt and ruthless but a popular administrator. Under his direction, Memphis developed the best fire department in the country. He constantly improved city utility services while making them affordable, and he kept taxes low.

Crump commissioned W.C. Handy to compose an election campaign song. Titled "Mr. Crump Don't Like It," the song was a local favorite even after the election (which Crump won). Handy changed the lyrics and published the tune in 1912 as "Memphis Blues." It was the first music ever published with the word "blues" in the title, cementing Beale Street's claim to being "birthplace of the blues."

Church had made Beale Street a magnet for music and entertainment. Under Crump, it also teemed with gambling, prostitution, drugs and murder. A century ago, Memphis was the South's second-largest city (New Orleans was bigger), and Beale Street combined rural Mississippi Delta jook-joint lawlessness with urban vices. The blues thrived there.

From 1909 to the Great Depression, Beale Street was home to music not heard in any other city. Early "jug bands" playing homemade instruments (like the Mississippi Sheiks), W.C. Handy's Knights of Pythias, Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Big Bill Broonzy, Robert Johnson and countless other blues acts performed there. Many of them lived in Memphis.

Meanwhile, the "Crump Machine" ran Memphis. It strong-armed businesses into buying insurance from Crump; forced political rivals to leave town; beat reporters who crossed him. When Crump refused to enforce Prohibition, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill that specifically removed him from the mayor's office. Crump was elected to Congress instead, and won reelection as Memphis' mayor again in 1939.

Robert R. Church's son, Robert R. Church, Jr., continued his father's civic work, and more. He became active in politics, forming the Lincoln League in 1916, which in a few months registered 10,000 blacks to vote. The following year he founded the Memphis branch of the NAACP. Robert R. Church Jr. believed politics was the only way blacks could obtain civil rights.

A Republican, Church maintained an uneasy truce with Crump, until Estes Kefauver threatened to defeat Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. Church was well connected in Republican politics, and Crump knew that if FDR lost, Church would become even more influential in Memphis.

Crump took violent action to prevent that. Church's properties were seized under the pretense of owing back taxes, his associates' businesses were harassed, causing some of them to close. The Church Park and Auditorium was renamed "Beale Avenue Auditorium" and the Church family home was burned to the ground to "test fire-fighting equipment." Robert R. Church, Jr. relocated to Washington, D.C.

The loss to Memphis of Robert R. Church, Jr. marked the end of Beale Street as the home of the blues. In truth, throughout the 1930s, the Depression had already forced many blues artists north, either to record their music or to find work of some other kind.

North, to a new home of the blues: Chicago. But that's another column.

"Blue Notes" is a series of The Evening Leader guest articles about the blues. The column above appeared the week of July 20, 2009.

Chris Botkin is a member of the St. Marys Blues Guild, organizers of the annual Riverside Bluesfest, scheduled for Labor Day Weekend in KC Geiger Park. For more information, visit the website, www.stmarysblues.com.

This column's Blues Classic is "When The Levee Breaks" by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy, performed by Led Zeppelin, who recorded this version in 1970 for their untitled fourth album. This recording represents a virtual history of the blues, from Lizzie (Memphis Minnie) Douglas' Louisiana roots, to her acoustic career in Memphis and her electric career in Chicago, to the British blues phenomenon of the 1960s and '70s. The lyrics refer to the great 1927 Mississippi River Flood in Greenville, Mississippi, when 13,000 people who were evacuated to a levee watched the river continue to rise.