The most important thing to keep in mind in a period of intense change is that things are, in fact, changing. Things weren't always this way so memory, history, is your best defense against manipulation. When you remember the way things were, you can fight to preserve them.
When you no longer remember what was always this way, then you're at their mercy. So, with that in mind, it's worth remembering that 100 years ago, Memphis was one of the richest, best organized cities in the country. It had a booming economy. It had beautiful municipal parks, a lot of them, more than 100. It had one of the most modern sanitation systems in the world, something we take for granted now. When yellow fever was real, no one took it for granted.
Memphis was such a big deal that it in fact was the informal capital of an entire American region, the Mississippi Delta, but not anymore. In fact, by last year, if you went to Memphis, it was hard to believe that any of that had ever been true at any point, because by that point and now, Memphis had become a husk and a highly threatening one.
In 2021, according to federal statistics, Memphis, Tennessee, was the most dangerous city in the United States. Last year, it recorded a total of 342 murders. Now, how many is that? Well, by comparison, San Antonio, Texas, which has more than twice the population, recorded fewer than half as many murders. So, by any measure at all, Memphis was absolutely falling apart, but Eliza Fletcher decided to make a life there anyway.
After graduating from college, Fletcher moved back to Memphis. Both sides of the family had lived there for more than 100 years. She married a man she'd met in church. He grew up there too and they had two little boys. She began teaching pre-kindergarten at a local girls' school. Here's a video that she made for her students at the beginning of the COVID lockdowns. It's only 15 seconds long, but you can tell immediately what sort of person Eliza Fletcher was.
ELIZA FLETCHER: Hey, girls, it's Mrs. Fletcher. I miss all of you so much. I'm just at home with my kids missing you guys wishing we were back at St. Mary's, but I wanted to touch base and say, "Hey."
"Hey, girls, it's Mrs. Fletcher. I miss you so much." So, every year on their wedding anniversary, Eliza Fletcher's husband wrote her a love note on Instagram. Reading them now will make you cry, but you can see why he felt that way. Her warmth and her decency shine through.
Meanwhile, in Memphis, seven miles across the city, lived a man called Cleotha Abston. Like Eliza Fletcher, Abston also grew up in the city of Memphis, but he could not have been a more different sort of person. Judging from his long public record, Cleotha Abston devoted his life to preying on people weaker than he was.
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Cleotha Abston was a predator. He was an evil man. At a young age, Abston was arrested for, among many, many other things, stealing, aggravated assault weapons charges, carjacking and rape. In 2000, he was convicted of kidnapping a local attorney at gunpoint downtown and forcing him into the trunk of his own car. Crimes like that are now common in Memphis. Last year, the city reported more than 100 kidnappings, but like most lifelong criminals, Cleotha Abston was never fully punished for what he did.
He was released years before the end of his prison sentence. Nor was he in any way sense reformed by his experience behind bars. Abston was well known in his apartment complex as of last week for his sexual aggression and his perversity. He terrified his neighbors, but no one from any part of the justice system seems to have intervened.
Early last Friday morning, Eliza Fletcher and Cleotha Abston met for the first and last time.. As her husband and two young children slept at home, Eliza Fletcher went for an early morning run through her neighborhood. Cleotha Abston followed her, stalking her every move from a black SUV. According to the indictment, as Fletcher jogged by, Abston leapt out, beat her bloody, smashed her cell phone, then dragged her into his vehicle. Within an hour, Eliza Fletcher was dead. She'd been sexually assaulted and murdered. Police arrested Abston soon after based on surveillance video, but he refused to say what had happened to Eliza Fletcher, so her family waited in agony, but he didn't care. He never spoke.
Yesterday, authorities finally found Eliza Fletcher's body. She'd been thrown like garbage behind an abandoned building in a key part of town. The whole story could not be more shocking or more horrible, but here's what may be the scariest part. Some people didn't seem particularly shocked or horrified by it.
In the hours after Eliza Fletcher's disappearance, Biden voters on social media seemed to dismiss the crime on racial grounds. "Why are we paying so much attention to the kidnapping of an attractive, privileged White woman? That's racist." Others seem to blame Fletcher for the atrocity committed against her. "Why was she jogging at that hour, anyway? In Memphis? Come on."
The point they're making was clear: "Everyone knows the rules. Eliza Fletcher violated those rules. You can't go outside his certain hours in certain places in America, obviously, and if you do, if you violate the rules, you run the risk of being raped and murdered. That's how things work in this country. So, adapt. Accept it. Move on.".
To some extent, if we are being honest, all of us feel that way. Whether we articulated it or not, we know what the rules are. We know what we can and cannot do in modern America. Nothing is ever spelled out. Nothing can be spelled out at risk of punishment, but everyone knows what the parameters are. Cities like Memphis or Baltimore or Detroit or Montgomery or Gary, Indiana or Wilmington, Delaware, or a dozen other formerly prosperous, orderly, little cities across the country were destroyed forever by the rioting that accompanied our last progressive social revolution more than 50 years ago.
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Politicized criminals started breaking things, torching buildings, stealing and immediately anyone with a decent job just left. They pulled their kids out of school, sold the house or not, didn't matter, and they split for somewhere else and mostly they have never come back. That is true not simply in Memphis, but in places all over the country.
So, it seems a little weird to a lot of people when someone like Eliza Fletcher, someone who could live anywhere, voluntarily moves back to a place like Memphis, not to some suburb of Memphis, but to the city of Memphis. That seems weird to people. but it's not weird. It's not at all when you think about it. Eliza Fletcher was from Memphis. She grew up there, and she had a right to come back. This was her country, too, just as it's your country too.
An American citizen should be able to live or walk anywhere in America without being raped or murdered for it, period. That is the baseline requirement for civilization. It's called order. But increasingly, that is not what we have. What we have is a country where you just can't go some places. You're not wanted there and it's too dangerous for you to go. Most people accept this by default, but we should never accept this under any circumstances. To accept something is to concede that it is more or less normal.
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Once we acknowledge something as normal, whether it's children being castrated in the name of trans rights or women being murdered by rapists who should have been in prison but weren't because equity, once we accept that as normal, we are stuck with it forever. It is the new status quo. It will never change except to get worse.
The good people who lived in Memphis a century ago would never believe what has happened to the city they built. They would weep if they saw it. That will be the experience of every American before long. Our entire country will be Memphis if we don't put a stop to this insanity right now with as much force as is required.
