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Downtown should be for everyone, but many minorities feel unwelcome

by Joe Tarr

For Knoxville, it was a cultural landmark of sorts. On June 3, the hip-hop group Arrested Development played a free concert in Market Square. It was the first hip-hop group to play Sundown in the City, the city’s premier concert festival of the past several years, and Joseph Woods was thrilled about it.

Part of the thrill was that he joined the opening act, The Spades Band, to rap for a couple of numbers. It was also thrilling because Woods is in a hip-hop group called Fluid Engineerz (with which he’s known as Black Atticus) and he knows how difficult it is to promote the genre in Knoxville.

Hip-hop is arguably the most popular genre in pop music today. Arrested Development is not one of the biggest acts around, but in 1992 they scored a top-10 single with the song “Tennessee.” The African-American band is a crossover group, probably more popular with whites than blacks. Still, in terms of production and attendance, it was one of largest hip-hop shows Knoxville has hosted, aside from a few big tours that have come through the coliseum.

Like all the other Sundown concerts, thousands showed up for the show, but African Americans were sparse. Various people estimated the crowd was anywhere from 5 to 15 percent black.

Woods was surprised more fellow African Americans didn’t show up. He ran into some people from his East Knoxville neighborhood who were elated.

“The dude said, ‘We just happened to be riding by. We didn’t know about this. We didn’t know.’ There were way too many people out there for it not to be known,” Woods says. “It didn’t get advertised on my side of town.”

But neither was Woods particularly surprised by the fact that the crowd was largely white. From his point of view, Knoxville’s various ethnic communities don’t intermingle a whole lot. “I know black people who have never been to the west side of town and never had to interact with people outside their race until they got out of high school,” he says.

Ideally, the downtown of any city should be the social, cultural and political center for all its residents. But despite a concerted effort to revitalize Knoxville’s downtown, the place is by and large dominated by European Americans. Minorities own few businesses, and not many people of color bother with the place when it comes to bars, clubs, restaurants or cultural events. This disparity is true even though many of the neighborhoods surrounding downtown have a high percentage of minority residents.

That says something about the city as a whole. Knoxvillians largely keep to themselves, with their own kind, and it’s been that way for a long time.

“There’s a very definite cultural divide between the European-American and African-American communities,” says Atiba Bailey, an African American who owns a computer consulting company and is a musician. “You’re either in one element or the other. There’s not as much of a blend as there is in other cities. And then there’s not as much of a variety within the subcultures.

“We go to our little corners. We don’t come together. It’s kind of disheartening. What if Kashmir was downtown? What if Taste of Thai was downtown? What if Chandlers was downtown?” he says. “Having worked in New York and gone to school in Atlanta, I’ve just found places I feel most comfortable are where I find a broad variety of culture.”

Knoxville will never be like New York or even Atlanta in terms of cultural diversity. But when you look at the businesses that have opened downtown and the cultural events that are put on, it’s clear that the targeted demographic is mostly white professionals in their 20s to 40s. Does Knoxville genuinely value diversity? What would it take to create a downtown and a city that embraced its various cultures? No mere platitudes offer a solution.

Knoxville’s diversity spreads beyond black and white, but the city is still dominated by European Americans. In the city proper, African Americans make up 16.2 percent of population, about even with the state ratio, according the Census Bureau. Countywide, the percentage drops to 8.6 percent. Hispanics make up 1.6 percent of the city, 1.3 percent of the county. Asian Americans account for 1.5 percent of city residents, 1.3 percent of those in the county.

Collectively, African Americans make up a powerful consumer block. In the Knoxville area, black residents spend more than $417 million a year, according to a study by the Tennessee Valley Authority. That includes $22 million on dining in restaurants. Not much of that money appears to be getting spent downtown.

But the way the city’s largest minority is treated by and interacts with the majority population is telling.

Councilman Chris Woodhull is co-founder and head of Tribe One, a group that works with inner-city kids who are in gangs or in danger of becoming involved with them. He recently took a couple of young African American men he works with to eat at the Tomato Head in Market Square.

“What was interesting is they had no clue that Market Square was there. I took them through the store Bliss and they were amazed. One of them said, ‘I might come back here,’” Woodhull says.

“A couple of young guys I was talking to knew about another part of downtown, the City County Building and the courts. That kind of hit me right in the face. Something so close could be so far and people could actually drive through downtown for a reason and completely miss some of its assets.”

To be fair, there are probably a lot of young people, of all races, in far West Knoxville who are equally oblivious to downtown. But several black residents interviewed say they find little for them here. A few minorities find the place passively hostile to them, while others are as comfortable downtown as they are anywhere else in the city.

“I feel like some of the establishments either want to rush me out or they take their sweet time waiting on me,” says Theresa Reed, an activist who is African American. “There’s times I’ve gone down there to restaurants and I’ve waited around [for service]. Or it’s like hurry up and get me out of there. Plus there’s no soul-food restaurant down there.”

And there’s not much in the way of entertainment she appreciates. “I haven’t seen any bands advertised that I’d be interested in hearing. Maybe some of the jazz bands. I’ve just not seen any I’ve been interested in. To me they cater to 20- and 30-year-old white folks,” Reed says.

She notices these characteristics city-wide (she finds West Knoxville more hostile).

Amira Haqq, a filmmaker who attends the University of Tennessee, notices similar attitudes around Knoxville and in downtown. “You know when you’re not welcome,” Haqq says. “It’s hard for European Americans to understand it.... You get two different extremes. One is to not acknowledge you, and I think the message is ‘I hope you go away.’ The other is to follow you around.”

That racial tension isn’t as high in other cities Haqq has been in, she says. “I went to Charlotte a couple of weeks ago and went to a park and in this park there were black people, white people. Asians, Hispanics—everybody felt comfortable,” Haqq says. “The white people didn’t seem stressed out that there were black people in the park.”

Not all minorities feel hostility or tension. And there are businesses where many feel welcome. Stewart Taylor feels just fine downtown. He grew up in predominantly white neighborhoods in Oak Ridge and he doesn’t identify strongly along lines of ethnicity. He frequents several downtown establishments.

“Every place I go, nobody bats an eye or ignores us,” he says.

He doesn’t always feel comfortable in establishments that cater mainly to black people. “There’s a misconception that because I’m brown I could fit in anywhere. It’s not true at all. Some people would accept me, some would be bothered that I don’t have the right dialect. I don’t care about that stuff, but some people do,” he says.

A lot of African Americans—particularly older ones—have the same complaint about downtown Knoxville that white residents do: parking.

“I go downtown when I have to go to the McClung Collection or the library or to the City County Building, otherwise I stay away. The parking is atrocious,” says Bob Booker, a Knoxville historian and author. “I sometimes go to Regas or I stop into Harold’s for a sandwich. Other than that, I have no reason to go. There is nothing to attract me into downtown Knoxville, especially in the evening. I go to operas at the coliseum. But today’s entertainment does not turn me on.”

The recent surge in downtown housing hasn’t yet caught on with minority residents either. There are a couple black people living downtown, but the majority are young and white. There are of course many minorities living near downtown, in neighborhoods like Morningside, Parkridge, Austin Homes, Fort Sanders and Five Points.

A lot of what keeps minorities away may simply be inertia—when they come downtown they don’t see other minorities, so they don’t come back.

Bailey says he went to Barley’s Tap Room and Pizzeria with his fiancé recently. “We were the only minority couple there. On one level it felt like a cool environment. But there wasn’t that familiar element there... it doesn’t feel at home,” Bailey says.

Haqq has thought a lot about race—she is currently making a documentary about the experiences of Asian Americans. Asked whether she thinks the idea of story about a lack of diversity downtown—published by a paper with an all-white staff—she isn’t sure.

“Once we figure out what the problem is, what is going to happen? Who is going to utilize that information?” Haqq wonders. “It’s my feeling that a lot of businesses like it the way it is and don’t want attention brought to it.”

Avon Rollins is a little fuzzy on the dates, but he remembers leaving Knoxville in the mid-’60s to go fight with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for Civil Rights in the South. When he came back to town a few years later, his old neighborhood had been razed.

“Streets had disappeared. It was hard trying to find friends you used to live on the same street with, or the same proximity. The other thing that disappeared was a place for gathering,” he says.

The minority community was once an integral—albeit, a very segregated—part of downtown. That changed dramatically in the mid-’60s. The powers that be called it Urban Renewal, framing it as a way of clearing out blighted neighborhoods and using the land for civic projects.

“Some people called it ‘negro removal’ and that’s what it was. They moved thousands of families,” says Rollins, who is now executive director of the Beck Cultural Center.

Urban Renewal happened in several phases, with the bulk of it taking place from 1964 through 1974. It destroyed the city’s major African-American business district, which existed on the east side of downtown. Although several of the homes and buildings were dilapidated, many were in good condition. In their place, the city built the safety building, the auditorium and coliseum, parking garages, a school, parks, highways and public housing.

When he left town, Rollins’ parents lived in a large four-bedroom house that they owned. A parking garage for the coliseum sits there now. “When I came back they had relocated to a small, two-bedroom house, with a small kitchen, no dining room and mortgage,” he says.

The main commercial district for African Americans in the city was dispersed; few of the merchants were able to thrive elsewhere. The heart of it was at Central Avenue and Vine Street (or what is now Summit Hill). The Gem Theater at the intersection was the main theater for black people.

Jazz musician Rocky Wynder remembers playing at several clubs in the district. “From Central Avenue on up there were a lot of places, the Elks Club, the Workers Club,” he says.

Many who remember the district are still upset about what happened. “They just called out the bulldozers. It wasn’t a matter of what shape your business was in,” says Robert Booker, an author and Knoxville historian.

“It was very traumatic in that virtually every black business in that area was destroyed completely,” Booker says “[The businesses] tried to reestablish in other places, but they were a failure because they survived because of what I call the cluster effect. If someone dropped off clothes at the cleaners, they could get a bite to eat on the way back, stop at the drug store, get their shoes shined. When Urban Renewal took place, they were so scattered.

“People didn’t get properly paid for their businesses because they were in a so-called blighted area. So they were not able to relocate. Many of their homes were also taken by Urban Renewal so they had to find a new place to stay,” he says.

One drawback of integration was that many African-American businesses suffered, Booker and Rollins say. When white businesses were suddenly forced to serve black customers, the black businesses lost much of their clientele. But Urban Renewal did the most damage.

“If some of those businesses were left to stand, they may have been able to expand,” Booker says. “But they were wiped out completely so they didn’t stand a chance.”

In many ways, the city and downtown have never quite recovered.

There hasn’t been a vibrant cultural or commercial district for African Americans since the Vine and Central district was dispersed decades ago. Most of the city’s minorities are scattered about the city. East Knoxville and Lonsdale have several establishments that act as gathering places to some degree.

On Wednesday nights the place to be in East Knoxville for many people is the Magnolia Café. Tony Kimbrough owns it, along with the Malibu 7 nightclub on Martin Luther King Avenue.

By 6 p.m. on a Wednesday, the place is packed, mostly with African Americans 40 and older. One middle-aged white man is in the place too. It’s wing night, which always draws a crowd. Around 9 p.m., a younger crowd takes over. “We’ve got to be in bed early,” jokes Terrance Carter, executive director of the Partnership for Neighborhood Improvement, who is here tonight. The stereo system cranks ’70s funk, soul and disco, and that’s what several patrons say is one of the draws.

“Most of the places downtown don’t have this type of music—soul music,” says “Mac” McSwine, who works as an insurance agent.

One younger face in the crowd is Mike Mills, who just moved back from Atlanta to take care of his ill mother. He spends most of his time greeting old friends. Talking to a woman—who did not want to give her name—out on the front stoop of the restaurant, he says it feels like Knoxville has gone down hill since he lived here last. The two complain that there are no decent jazz or dance clubs or places to hear poetry or comedy acts.

“It’s going to be like that ‘til the end of time. I don’t care what people say,” the woman says.

“One night a week—that’s all we got,” she says, referring to Wednesday nights at the Magnolia Café. “Get it while you can.”

Kimbrough used to own the Matrix dance club in Bearden and he says he considered moving into the Old City building where the Red Iguana is now located. But the building was sold before he could buy it, he says.

“There’s not much diversity in my establishment,” Kimbrough says, but adds, “I do have several white customers. I roll out the welcome mat to anyone who comes through the door. We encourage diversity.

“Downtown was always a center for my family because it’s where we did our shopping and we rode public transportation. I worked downtown, my mother worked downtown. We went to the theaters downtown. Downtown was important,” he says.

He doesn’t feel there’s any deliberate attempt to keep minorities out. “There’s a movement nationally of businesses moving back into downtowns. Hopefully one day we might look at something like that,” he says.

Several people said they used to go to the Lucille’s when it was an active jazz club. But the music scene at Lucille’s declined in recent years and is now being renovated as a barbeque restaurant, which will feature bluegrass music. Other black residents compliment places like the Preservation Pub, where they say the service is good.

In 2000, Baffin Harper Sr. opened a club geared toward African Americans in the Old City called the Platinum. Featuring jazz, blues and a mix of dance music, it took months for him to get a beer permit. Some merchants in the Old City campaigned City Council against approval of a permit. Even when it was thriving, the club seemed oddly segregated from the rest of the Old City. Harper, who is African American, did not return numerous calls from Metro Pulse for this story. One sad irony about the place—the building might be taken through eminent domain, as part of TDOT’s highway expansion project.

This year part of the Kuumba Festival, which celebrates African-American culture, was held downtown. Most of the events were held in Chilhowee Park, but this year there was a parade on Gay Street, which culminated in Market Square. It was the first time recent memory that African Americans dominated the square.

“It was a great setting [in Market Square]. I enjoyed it. I hope they do something there next year,” says one woman who attended.

There are certainly attempts to reach out to black residents. The Knoxville Museum of Art’s “Alive After Five” series on Friday evenings is one place a lot of minorities say they frequent. It regularly features jazz bands and the crowds are regularly mixed race. The KMA is also hosting the Knoxville African American Film Festival this weekend (see page 24 for more details).

UT is opening an art gallery in Gay Street’s newly renovated Emporium Building and the first exhibit will be a retrospective of the work of Joe Delaney, an African American painter born and raised in Knoxville.

This summer’s Saturday Night on the Town had a stage, sponsored by Wild 98.7, in Market Square featuring several hip hop artists and DJs.

Downtown’s other big events—the Rossini Festival, Honda Hoot, the Dogwood Festival, Gay Street a-go-go, Boomsday—seem geared mainly for white people. Metro Pulse’s inaugural MetroFest might feature a performance by the Knoxville-born soul singer Clifford Curry, but otherwise the line-up consists of white rock bands.

Many black residents were regulars at the Market Square farmer’s market before the square was renovated. The revamped Saturday morning markets are patronized mainly by whites. Aside from the first feature, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the Knox County Library’s upcoming Market Square movie series don’t demonstrate much in the way of ethnic diversity in their subject matter.

The point is not that the organizers of these events are intentionally exclusive, but the idea of including or marketing to minorities doesn’t seem to get much consideration.

“Most of the activities that happen in downtown, other than the Kuumba Festival, are not geared toward minorities. And that’s historical,” says Kimbrough, as he takes a break from the kitchen at Magnolia Cafe. “Most of the minority events are held in the [black] community.”

When efforts are made, sometimes minorities don’t show much interest or don’t find out about the events. Booker remembers when, after years of criticism for not including minorities in the Dogwood Festival, they were invited to participate. Booker sat on a committee helping to organize events for the Dogwood out at Knoxville College. “I’m not sure it attracted a lot of black people because when I looked out at the audience it was mostly white people,” he says.

Derrick Ellis, a musician, says there’s nothing for minorities at Boomsday, in the way of pre-fireworks food or entertainment, but he doesn’t blame the white establishment. He says there aren’t any local minority-owned radio stations with the financial means to sponsor big events the way corporate stations push Boomsday.

Sundown in the City has been diverse in its offerings, featuring jazz, reggae, blues, Cuban, Latino rock and funk. (Although the majority of the shows are of the rock, alt-country and bluegrass genres.)

Its promoter, Ashley Capps of AC Entertainment, has brought a lot of eclectic, diverse acts to downtown at other venues, first at his club in the Old City, Ella Gurus, and later at venues like the Tennessee and Bijou theaters, the World’s Fair Park, Blue Cats, and Sundown in the City, including acts like the Buena Vista Social Club, Taj Mahal, Ray Charles, Olu Dara, Public Enemy, Herbie Hancock, and the Roots, to name just a few.

“It’s really easy to slip into a stereotype about what different groups of people actually want to see. It’s easy to assume that Indians want to go see sitar concerts or black people want to go to hip-hop concerts or white people want to see Led Zeppelin tribute bands,” Capps says. “Within all of those cultural groups you have just as much cultural diversity. I know a number of black kids who are really into alternative rock, and in some cases old ’70s rock ’n’ roll. People don’t always fit into the stereotypes that we put them into.”

Capps says he has geared advertising toward black neighborhoods for some concerts. But he doesn’t think it has much of an effect. “I don’t think you’re dealing with an especially different mindset than with white people. There’s only a certain percentage of people interested in cultural events. Most of the research I’ve seen says only 30 to 40 percent of the population attends a concert, ever, in the course of a year,” Capps says. “Those numbers translate across all demographics or racial barriers. There are a certain number of people interested in culture. And those people interested in culture tend to seek it out.”

A number of clubs downtown—Barley’s, Blue Cats, the Pilot Light, Preservation Pub among them—have hosted diverse entertainment as well, mostly blues, reggae and jazz, with a little bit of hip hop at Blue Cats and the Pilot Light. But minority attendance at these shows is typically low.

Several African Americans complain that it’s difficult to find out about events going on downtown. Although many of them look to Metro Pulse to find out what’s happening, they also say the paper is difficult to find in black neighborhoods.

Woods says he wants to know about more than just the so-called “black” entertainment. “Tell me when the opera is playing. I’ll tell you when the hip-hop show is,” he says.

“If we really want that change, we have to go to different events and make it happen, invest more than just your money, and neutralize negative factors like complacency, apathy, racism,” Woods adds. “You have to open up your mind to focus on things you normally don’t consider.”

When asked what the city is doing to encourage minority businesses downtown and diverse cultural events, Bill Lyons, Knoxville’s director of development, says, “I guess I don’t have an answer for you because I haven’t thought about it in those terms. Obviously, we want to have diversity downtown.

“I don’t really know what one would do [to encourage minority businesses],” he says. “The city itself doesn’t have a funding mechanism for it. I don’t know exactly what we could do.”

Amy Nolan, a spokesman for Mayor Bill Haslam, says the mayor values diversity, and that it will follow as downtown is revived. “Revitalization is one of the linchpins to making Knoxville more diverse,” she says.

The Central Business Improvement District doesn’t have any programs geared to encourage minority businesses, says Michele Hummel, the CBID’s operations director. The CBID is developing a program to aid small businesses, she says, which minorities are welcome to utilize. “Because so many businesses downtown are small entrepreneurs, we want to help them,” she says.

Hummel couldn’t provide statistics on minority-owned businesses in the downtown area. Knox County and the state both have programs geared toward helping minority businesses, she says.

The lack of programs to encourage diversity suggests that the people in power don’t think much about it. Everybody says they want diversity, that minorities are welcome, that minorities have just as much access to loan and entrepreneur programs as anyone else. But they don’t seem to be actively trying to involve minorities, who are still dealing with the effects of centuries of institutional racism, from slavery through the projects like Urban Renewal.

“The way you get [participation and acceptance] is to include people in the planning. I’m not sure that that took place,” says Woodhull, who was elected last November, after most of the downtown revitalization programs were approved. “Without wanting to be accusatory, I don’t think necessarily the minority community has been included at the table in terms of downtown redevelopment. And I’m not exactly sure why. Crandall Arambula [the consultants involved in downtown redevelopment planning] would probably say we worked with who showed up [to the public planning meetings].”

Not all minorities blame the power structure. Wynder remembers what the city used to be like, when blacks weren’t allowed in most businesses. He credits progressive whites with opening the doors for him to play to white audiences. “So much has changed. It’s really moving the way it should be,” he says. “People seem to really get along here beautifully. There’s always going to be one or two you can’t satisfy, but don’t waste your breath.” Others say change needs to start in their own communities.

But Saadia Williams, executive director of the Center for Race Relations of East Tennessee, says that it’s easy for people in power to ignore racism, since Knoxville hasn’t had the more violent and serious racial conflicts that cities like Los Angeles or Cincinnati have had.

“We tend to think everything is all right. That really isn’t the case when you stop to look at the various disparities that exist. You can look at education or health and recognize the disparities. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out,” Williams says.

“There are people walking around with a veil over their eyes thinking racism doesn’t exist in our community because we haven’t had those major racial incidents. It’s like the iceberg theory. What you see at the top might look fine but once you dig underneath it looks a whole lot different,” Williams says.

“In order for there to be true democracy, everyone has to participate. When one group of people is left out, you don’t have full participation,” she says. “When I look at the various community boards, do I see people who look like me?

“Racism affects everybody. It affects whites because it doesn’t allow them to be whole, it doesn’t afford them the opportunity to be all they can be.

“In the South, we tend to be polite,” she adds. “When you’re taught to be nice and polite, you don’t bring up those subjects that might create a little tension. There’s nothing wrong with a little discomfort if it’s going to mean correcting a situation.”

August 19, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 34 © 2004 Metro Pulse