Even today, Melrose High School and the Brown Derby nightclub still stand, while the Southern Heritage Classic football game and the community’s annual Christmas parade are two must-see events, replete with spangled high steppers, marching bands, and a Black Santa Claus. Its original luster may be dusty and faded, but driving through, it’s easy to imagine what this “Southern Harlem” must’ve looked like in its heyday. Straddling an area of land between Midtown, the University of Memphis campus, and the Norfolk-Southern railway yard, Orange Mound-named for the grove of Osage orange trees that once grew here-is still an active neighborhood today. Published online Tuesday, December 8, 2020

The neighborhood quickly grew, providing a ray of hope and potential opportunity for rural Blacks who relocated to the city from outlying Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. In 1890, the situation reversed when enterprising Elzey Eugene Meachem established the first all-Black community in the South on the site, putting land ownership into the hands of former slaves for $100 per lot.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the land was owned by one John Deaderick, whose 1,000-plus slaves chopped cotton on the sprawling 5,000 acre plantation. On the other side of the fairgrounds-and, somehow, a world away-is Orange Mound, which many Memphians regard as an urban ghetto. It’s a musical community-Ardent Studios, Young Avenue Sound, and dozens of smaller recording outfits are located here, while my tiny dead-end street is home to producer Scott Bomar, session drummer Paul Taylor, his rockabilly bass-slapping girlfriend Amy LaVere, and Eric Chatmon, the brother of the late blues pianist Memphis Slim. My gentrified neighborhood, Midtown, boasts an eclectic array of homegrown businesses, fancy boutiques, and unique restaurants. MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE – My circa-1911 house sits just across the street from the Mid-South Fairgrounds, where Elvis Presley used to take his daughter, Lisa Marie, for her birthday.

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