Herenton Investigation Stirring Up Old Wounds

With the odds against an indictment of Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton ebbing, we can only hope that federal investigators know what they are doing.

It seems that more and more, after a decade of federal investigators stirring up rumors that involved everything from drugs to sex to bribery, the current grand jury investigation seems dead serious about taking action.

While the taint of the overreaching in the Joseph Lee fiasco lingers, the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office’s have nursed their bruises and ramped up the Herenton investigation with a passion that often makes it appear to be a holy crusade. We only hope that grand jury members inject more caution into the process since they hold the match that could ignite an explosion – political, racial and civic – with dire consequences for our city.

Different View Of The World

Much of this risk stems from the polarizing figure that Mayor Herenton has become, so it should be no surprise that the ongoing – and expanding - grand jury hearings are amplifying and intensifying old familiar themes.

There seems to be something almost gleeful in many parts of the “white community” about Mayor Herenton’s travails, while there’s a growing sentiment in the “African-American community” that’s equal parts sympathy and frustration.

Nothing more dramatically symbolizes the divide that separates the way that blacks and whites in Memphis perceive and experience the city in which they live than this federal investigation. From where many African-Americans stand, media coverage regularly seems to reflect white attitudes and opinions. That’s why there’s the feeling in many quarters that the news media have “piled on” in their Herenton coverage.

Learned Behavior

In addition, there’s an opinion by many influential African-Americans that the media seem intent on suggesting that there is some unholy conspiracy by black insiders to benefit from the decisions of the public sector. “Who do you think we learned that from?” asked one rhetorically.

“It’s strange to many of us that there was so little interest in showing the connections between white politicians and white businessmen, especially those in the real estate industry, for years although it was the worst-kept secret in Memphis. Now, there seems to be a determination to smear anyone (African-American) who’s been successful and who has anything to do with city government as somehow unsavory or unethical.”

Defenders in City Hall point to lack of action, if not interest, by the federal government on a number of questionable dealings by white businessmen, and even Mayor Herenton himself has called out the grand jury investigation into the former Shelby County mayor as a prime example of politics trumping justice.

In that case, a number of prominent white political figure were called to the grand jury, but the case unraveled when Republican-appointed officials with the Department of Justice pulled the plug on the investigation into a Republican politician by issuing a ruling that stunned investigators but which eliminated the grounds for their investigation.

Changing The Rules To Win The Game

To the most cynical, it is no accident that under a Republican Administration that blatantly blurred the lines between politics and justice, the African-American power structure in Nashville was obliterated, and attention now turns to the city mayor.

As a highly-regarded African-American political observer said: “White people think we didn’t notice, but once we got control of the ballot box in Shelby County, there was a push to create a bunch of autonomous nonprofit groups to take control of some of our most valuable public places.

“Just look around: how many black folks head up these major nonprofits and quasi-government groups? Zero. How many black folks head up the major social services agencies even though they’re mainly serving people of color? None. These aren’t just coincidences. It’s part of the power structure that was invented to offset the growing power of African-Americans. Once we figured out how to win with the game, the rules were changed.”

The World In Black And White

In this way, the indictment of former MLGW president Joseph Lee not only proved the truth of the old adage that federal prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich, but that they would do anything to bring down any African-American with power. “Just think. Could Herenton have appointed any black person with strong ties to him that wouldn’t have been crucified by the paper?” an African-American businessman said. “But as soon as he appointed a white guy from City Hall to run MLG&W, the media got quiet as a mouse.”

Because of all of this, we just don’t see any way that the current U.S. Attorney’s Office can get the indictment it seems to want so badly without opening racial wounds and serious questions about its objectivity. For us, it’s three strikes and out.

Strike one: the U.S. Attorney is not only a lame duck from the Bush Administration but an interim lame duck at that. The Lee debacle tainted the office’s reputation with political overtones, and as a result, any grand jury action taken as a result of this U.S. Attorney would immediately be suspect.

And You’re Out

There’s strike two: the image of the U.S. Department of Justice has been seriously tarred by revelations of how much Bush Administration politics has played in investigative decisions and prosecutors’ appointments. And it’s worth remembering that the decision to convene a grand jury to investigate Mayor Herenton had to be approved in the Washington offices of the DOJ.

Strike three: a new U.S. Attorney will be appointed in the coming weeks by President Barack Obama. The truth is that most of the career prosecutors in the office will remain, not to mention that the FBI agents handling the investigation will remain as well. In other words, these allegedly non-partisan members of the system will be there to advocate their positions and present their evidence to the new U.S. Attorney.

In the end, if an indictment is to be returned by the grand jury, it should be done under the Obama Administration to mitigate suspicions of selective prosecution, selective media coverage and selective leaks.

Trust Matters

Why does all of this matter? Unless lines of trust are stronger and there is a belief in the innate fairness of justice, Memphis will be a wounded city limping into the future in which its divisiveness prevents any hope of success. But, more fundamentally, until lines of trust are stronger, we fail at the basics of American democracy.

As long as African-Americans see racism in events like the Tennessee Waltz and white people complain that the African-American community is paranoid, we create a civic brand of quicksand that slowly pulls all of Memphis under, and at precisely the time that together, we need to be staking out a strong competitive place in the global economy.