Orange Mound Black Community in Memphis represents most significant Black Community in America post Civil war; Black Memphis elected officials use their function & Authority to erase Black Memphis History & Marginalize Black Community of Orange Mound
MEMPHIS, TN, April 16, 2026 /24-7PressRelease/ — Anthony “Amp” Elmore a NARA Honored Black Memphis Historian is fighting Memphis White Supremacy, Racism and Black on Black Racism for “Black Education and Inclusion.”
Memphis, Tennessee the City where Dr. Martin Luther King was brutally assassinated April 4, 1968 has a Cotton Museum and not a “Black Memphis History Museum.” There exists a longstanding Southern policy in Memphis to marginalize Black Memphis History. The unwritten rule in Memphis, Tennessee that is practiced in Memphis, Tennessee is that “Black Memphis Leaders” do not bring up discuss or promote “Black Memphis History.”
One of he most clearest examples of Memphis practice and erasure of Black Memphis history is via an August 24, 2024 new release titled: Memphis World Kickbox Champ & filmmaker Elmore Ask Black Memphis Mayor Paul Young to Give Black History & Culture a Chance.
The 2022 census reveals Memphis is the largest majority-Black city in the US and among the most uneducated. The one thing that “Black Memphis Leaders” can pride itself on is its practice and erasure of “Black Memphis History.”
In regards to American President Donald Jr. Trump Memphis, Tennessee is the paradigm of the erasure and exclusion of DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion. Whereas Memphis has a “Cotton Museum” and no “Black Memphis History Museum.”
One of Memphis greatest disadvantages and practice of White Supremacy is the work of “Memphis Tourism. “Kevin Kane the CEO of “Memphis Tourism” is the most powerful and influential CEO in Memphis history who has single handed shaped the greatest inequity and culture in Memphis history. Kevin Kane earns a hefty $600,000 year salary and sits on a 27 million dollar cash reserve regarding Memphis, Tourism that specifically erases Black Memphis history, culture and education.
Kevin Kane single handed excluded Black Memphis of its Black Cultural History. While Memphis is the most populated city of Blacks in America Memphis Memphis not only does not have a “Black Memphis History Museum.” Memphis tourism created a culture and practice of “benefitting off of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King whereas the civil rights Museum is a major tourist attraction whereas whites can benefit off the death of Dr. Martin Luther Kings as a Tourist attraction while erasing Black Memphis history.
Most important Memphis, Tennessee is the model of the erasure of DEI as practiced and promoted by American President Donald J. Trump. Unknown and untold in Memphis is the story of the White Memphis Mayor “Edward Hull Crump.” He is known as “Boss Crump” whose practices and policies are practiced in Memphis today in 2026 called “The Crump Rule.”
There exist the Crump rule that exists today in Memphis in 2026. Number 1. No Black leader was allowed to demand social and economic equality with White people. Number 2. Crump rule number two: Blacks were not allowed to use their wealth, power and education to empower other Blacks. In facts Blacks were not allowed to share Black Memphis history.
There are African/American Communities in Memphis that was established by Black entrepreneurs whereas this history is untold in Memphis as part of “The Crump Rule in Memphis.” Sharing such information would empower other Blacks whereas this information remains untold in Memphis. The number three E.H. Crump Rule is “Stay in your Lane.”
The number three E.H. Crum rules was simple: “Stay in your lane.” Blacks leaders in Memphis are allowed to service Blacks however they are no allowed to compete with White businesses.
The ultimate practice of Memphis Tourism is to erase and marginalize Black Memphis History. STAX, Beale Street, Blues are all designed as White narrates that does not include Black prospectives or are they designed for Blacks or equality. It is only Whites who benefit from “Memphis Tourism.”
Anthony “Amp” Elmore notes; “Education is the key to Black liberation.” Elmore notes education reflects a deep historical understanding that knowledge empowers self-determination, economic independence, and freedom from oppression. Education is a belief central to Black activism from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power era.
During times slavery manifested secret slave schools. Regarding Black History community-built institutions like Bethune-Cookman college. Figures like Fredrick Douglass, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers saw literacy and critical thinking as a vital tools against systemic racism.
This philosophy asserts that education counters white supremacist narratives, builds self-respect, equips individuals for civic participation, and fosters community resilience, making it a powerful force for dismantling inequality and achieving true freedom.
Lets move back to the titled of our subject: “Anthony “Amp” Elmore NARA Honored Historian expose Memphis White Supremacy, Racism and Black on Black Racism and Betrayal of Dr. King & Black America, Regarding Black Memphis Community of Orange Mound.”
The father of Black History Dr. Carter G. Woodson wrote: “Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.”
The 1890 “birthday” of Orange Mound is a historical myth that centers on a white real estate transaction while ignoring the established Black agency and institutional growth that began in 1879. To correct the record, one must look at the “Institutional Birth” of the community, which was catalyzed by the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878.
Unknown and untold in Memphis is the story of “The Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878.”
This act of nature collapsed the white power structure in Memphis, creating a unique opportunity for Black residents to claim and protect the land. Consequently, 1879 marks the true founding of the community with the establishment of its spiritual and social anchors: Mt Moriah Baptist Church and Mt. Pisgah CME Church. These institutions were strike into the ground a full decade before any white developer arrived, serving as the “birth certificates” of a sovereign Black territory.
The facts regarding land ownership and infrastructure further dispel the 1890 narrative. In 1883, Mt Moriah Baptist Church officially purchased the land at the corner of Carnes and Boston, providing a physical “receipt” of Black ownership that predates the E.E. Meacham subdivision.
Furthermore, in 1889, the first Black school in Shelby County (District 18, the precursor to Melrose High School was established at Spotswood and Boston. These records prove that a cohesive, organized, and self-sustaining Black community was already flourishing before Meacham filed plans in April 1890 to sell narrow 25×100 plots.
Meacham’s 1894 advertisements, which mention only rental properties rather than home sales, confirm that he was not the architect of the Black middle-class community that had already been built by the people themselves starting in 1879.
The true birth of Orange Mound is a story of divine intervention and Black defiance that has been buried under a century of white supremacist mythology. It began not with a real estate transaction, but with the **Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878**, an act of nature that fundamentally broke the white power structure of Memphis. Before the plague, the land was platted as “Melrose Station,” an exclusive white enclave envisioned by William and Michael Deaderick.
However, when 25,000 whites fled the city in a three-day panic and over 5,000 others died, the “Melrose” infrastructure was left in the hands of the Black majority who stayed to save the city. By 1879, as Memphis lost its charter, the Black community had already seized their agency, establishing **Mt. Moriah Baptist Church** and **Mt. Pisgah CME Church**.
These were not merely houses of worship; they were sovereign governmental institutions that recorded births, deaths, and marriages, anchoring a stable, organized population that predated any white developer’s involvement.
The physical evidence of this prior Black community is irrefutable and renders the “Meacham 1890” narrative a historical impossibility. In **1883**, seven years before E.E. Meacham appeared, Mt. Moriah Baptist Church purchased the land at Carnes and Boston, signaling a permanent congregational settlement.
Even more telling are the 1889 Shelby County Government minutes, which recorded the decision to build **District 18**, the first school for Blacks in the county, at the corner of Spotswood and Boston. Logic dictates that a government does not build a school where people do not already live; the school was placed there to serve an existing, thriving Black community.
When Meacham finally registered his plans in May 1890 to sell 982 narrow “shotgun” lots nearly two miles away, he was not creating a community—he was attempting to profit from an established one, even appropriating the name **”Orange Mound”** which the Black residents had already given their land.
This legacy proves that Orange Mound is 100% disconnected from the myth of the Deaderick plantation “Osage Orange” tree. The community was born from the infrastructure of Melrose Station, a territory transformed from a white dream into a Black reality by the fire of the epidemic and the fortitude of the 1879 pioneers.
To credit a white real estate salesman in 1890 for a community that had already built its own churches, purchased its own land, and secured its own government school is a betrayal of the truth. Orange Mound was never a “gift” from white Memphis; it was a sovereign territory established by Black agency on the ruins of a collapsed colonial order, making it the most significant post-Civil War Black community in the world.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote: “On some positions, cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right”
Anthony “Amp” Elmore a NARA Honored Black Memphis historian stands up against Memphis White Supremacy, Racism and Black on Black Racism to stand up for truth and have the courage to say “The Whiteman E.E. Meacham did not start Orange Mound in 1890.” Anthony “Amp” Boldly states that Orange Mound was started by two Black Churches MT Moriah Baptist Church and MT Pisgah CME Church started in 1879.
Orange Mound is the most significant post-Civil War Black community in the world. While so-called leaders “sell out” the community’s legacy to satisfy tourism boards and white real estate narratives, the facts remain irrefutable. A true “post-Civil War community” is defined by Black agency—communities built by the hands of those who had just broken the chains of slavery.
Unlike Harlem, which was a Jewish enclave that Blacks migrated into decades later, or rural towns born of flight and desperation, Orange Mound was an urban conquest. It was born in 1879, a mere fourteen years after the Civil War, not through white permission, but through a Divine Land Grant delivered by the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878. When 25,000 whites fled Memphis in three days and 5,000 others died, the Black survivors did not run; they stayed, took the helm of the city, and staked their claim to the earth.
This history is a strike against the global theft of Black land. While the European powers gathered at the Berlin Conference of 1884 to carve up the entire continent of Africa, the Black pioneers of Orange Mound were performing a counter-revolution. In 1883—a year before the world’s map was stolen by white colonialists Mt. Moriah Baptist Church purchased the land at 2630 Carnes and Boston.
In Black culture, the purchase of land for a church is the establishment of a government; it is the archive of births, deaths, and marriages; it is the signal of a permanent nation. By 1889, when the Shelby County Government was forced to build the first Black school at Spotswood and Boston, they weren’t building for a “future” subdivision—they were building for a massive, thriving, self-actualized community that already existed. This community named itself **Orange Mound** to signal its royal African identity and its indigenous connection to the earth.
Today, in 2026, after 147 years of continuous existence, Orange Mound stands as the “Ethiopia of the American South.” It is the only community in the world that can trace an unbroken institutional lineage from the immediate post-Civil War era to the present day, surviving the collapse of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, and the betrayal of modern politics.
To credit a white real estate salesman in 1890 with the “birth” of this community is not just a mistake—it is a lie designed to erase Black agency. No other community in the world can claim this level of significance: a place born of an act of God, built by Black hands, and preserved by a people who refused to be moved. It is time for Black Memphis leaders to find the courage to stand on this truth: Orange Mound is the global gold standard of Black independence.
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