Blacks in Memphis lose decades of economic gains, By Michael Powell, May 30, 2010, New York Times: “For two decades, Tyrone Banks was one of many African-Americans who saw his economic prospects brightening in this Mississippi River city. A single father, he worked for FedEx and also as a custodian, built a handsome brick home, had a retirement account and put his eldest daughter through college. Then the Great Recession rolled in like a fog bank. He refinanced his mortgage at a rate that adjusted sharply upward, and afterward he lost one of his jobs. Now Mr. Banks faces bankruptcy and foreclosure. ‘I’m going to tell you the deal, plain-spoken: I’m a black man from the projects and I clean toilets and mop up for a living,’ said Mr. Banks, a trim man who looks at least a decade younger than his 50 years. ‘I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. But my whole life is backfiring.’ Not so long ago, Memphis, a city where a majority of the residents are black, was a symbol of a South where racial history no longer tightly constrained the choices of a rising black working and middle class. Now this city epitomizes something more grim: How rising unemployment and growing foreclosures in the recession have combined to destroy black wealth and income and erase two decades of slow progress…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty