MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Miriam Cordero, a longtime Memphis resident who owns a downtown flower shop, sounded torn last week about the arrival of federal forces in the city in the coming days.
“If they come to help with the crime, I think we can be OK with that. But if they’re going to scare people?” Cordero said. “It’s so vague, the information we have.”
President Donald Trump’s decision to send the National Guard and other agencies into the city has many residents feeling similarly uncertain: They are weary of the crime rate, one of the highest in the nation, and open to some federal help. Yet some are also wary of more heavy-handed policing that fails to address systemic problems.
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican who supports the plan, has offered few specifics about personnel or assignments, beyond that at least 13 agencies would be present in the city beginning this week to help with local law enforcement. The National Guard will act in a support role to the local police and deputies, he has said, without the authority to arrest people.
For some, the prospect of troops in fatigues has invoked one of the city’s most fraught periods, during the sanitation workers’ strike and the aftermath of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, when the guard was sent to quell unrest. Even among residents who are open to the idea of federal help, there are concerns about optics and skepticism about how effective it will be.
“I don’t want it to just be a show, because we’ve got real issues in our community,” said Charlie Caswell Jr., a commissioner in Shelby County, home to Memphis, who represents some of the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. He added, “My people, they want to see the change.”
More than the National Guard, some people have asked questions about possible fallout from the involvement of a number of federal agencies in the intervention, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Sharon Becton, 66, who was taking a break from selling flavored popcorn in the Midtown neighborhood last week, said simply, “I just hope and pray it helps.”
Few, if any, will deny the challenges Memphis faces, especially related to crime rates in some of its neighborhoods. But in one of the nation’s largest majority-Black cities, many of those challenges can also be traced to decades of racist oppression and disinvestment.
A University of Memphis analysis published in 2024 found that the city’s poverty rate of 22.6% was among the highest in the nation, with Black residents disproportionately affected. Wages tend to be low and have stayed stagnant.
The city’s pride is evident in its artistic ingenuity, investments by local philanthropists and even the local NBA franchise. As readily as they acknowledge its challenges, some residents still bristle at outsiders defining Memphis by its worst moments, like the King assassination or the high-profile beating of a motorist by members of its police force in 2023.
Memphis is “a city that has so much potential, so much opportunity, so much talent, but yet and still the resources aren’t there,” said K. Durell Cowan, the founder and head of Heal 901, a local nonprofit. He questioned why his organization had lost access to federal grants this year, yet money remained for an influx of agents and officers.
Violent crime has decreased in the city recently, slowly mirroring a national trend, after a series of high-profile murders and carjackings in 2022 and 2023. In some neighborhoods, however, there is a desire for more progress.
“Maybe they are trying, but trying is not keeping these people alive,” said Pastor Leon Jones Jr., who works in the neighborhoods of Raleigh and Frayser in north Memphis, where crime rates often outpace those of the rest of the city. “We need some help.”
Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat who has focused on public safety in his first term, has said he does not think the National Guard is the best solution but has stressed that the city should work with the federal government regardless.
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