Finding Common Ground in Memphis

This spring, for seven weeks, a group of Memphians concerned about the racial tenor of the city convened 221 participants and 48 facilitators for small group discussions using the “Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation” curriculum developed by Everyday Democracy.
And in all, it was a smashing success! We started with a goal of 100 participants, but quickly grew well beyond that. And we’re gearing up now for 600 participants at several locations across the community.
Everyday Democracy was a wonderful resource, but along the way, we learned dozens of lessons of how to construct and grow a community dialogue-to-action program.

And if we’d known then what we know how, here’s just three things we would have done differently:

1. Worked harder to make the participant class match the racial diversity of Shelby County (Memphis and some surrounding suburban cities). As it was, we had about 35% black participation, the goal was 53% black participation.
2. Kept our eye on the class diversity of the participants. This first round of a three-year initiative attracted a lot of upper-middle class and middle-class folks, but fewer from other points on the class spectrum.
3. Extended the training for the facilitators from one day to two days. We had a great, dedicated diverse (50-50 black/white) group of facilitators, but a few scenarios arose during the sessiosn that we wished we’d coached them on.

For any other cities planning their own dialogue-to-action programs who’d like to learn from our experiences, please feel free to contact co-coordinators Lisa Moore Willis or Wendi C. Thomas by e-mail.

Yours on Common Ground,

Wendi C. Thomas

Wendi C. Thomas is a metro columnist for The Commercial Appeal, the daily paper in Memphis, Tenn., co-coordinator of Common Ground and its founder.