M A K I N G H I S T O R Y
21
The founder and CEO of Poplar Christian Health
Service, a Christian counseling wellness ministry
“I want to help as many veterans as possible with
their health care needs, improve the relationships
between the veteran and civilian communities,”
s.
This is the Lord ’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes...
Lolita Poplar
FIRST WOMAN & FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN
TO COMMAND POST 1 MEMPHIS
LOLITA
POPLAR
“It is indeed an incredible honor to be elected
illustrious tradition that does so much to help
our veterans,” said Poplar, who is the post
SPIRIT MEMPHIS
PASTOR JOE WILEY 70th
On Sunday May 20, 2018, at Victory Missionary
Baptist Church, at 345 Mt. Zion Road in Piperton,
TN 38107, at 11 AM, Pastor Joe N. Wiley celebrated
his 70th birthday. The guest speaker was Pastor
Vernon L. Horner of Greater New Bethel M. B.
Church. It was titled “A Love Fellowship” and it
was “Bringing God’s People to Victory through
the Manifestation of God’s Power” based off of
Deuteronomy 20:4. Pastor Joe N. Wiley was truly
celebrated and honored on his birthday. It was a
dedication and a commemoration of the great
37
man that he is.
This is the Lord’s doing and
it is marvelous in our eyes...
C O V E R S T O R Y
07
A once abandoned parking lot next to Clayborn
Temple has been transformed into a plaza
honoring the 1968 sanitation workers. Constructed
on the corner of Hernando and Pontotoc, the new
‘I AM A MAN’ Plaza officially opened Thursday.
The city of Memphis officially cut the ribbon. The
centerpiece of the plaza is the phrase ‘I AM A
MAN’ sculpted in stainless-steel. Cliff Garten, of
Cliff Garten Studios in California who helped
design the plaza said as he was contemplating
what it should look like, he realized there was
“nothing more eloquent than what the sanitation
workers simply stated in 1968. The ‘I AM A
MAN’ sculpture brings these iconic words into a
new moment in our history 50 years later,” he
said. Garten, who was selected from a list of
national candidates, said the idea was to create a
place that causes people to “feel and respond to”
the Clayborn Temple, as a significant landmark in
the civil rights movement. “Let there be no doubt,
that the ‘I AM A MAN’ plaza was made for you
and belongs to Memphis,” Garten said. “But it
also belongs to America.
It’s a place to teach, a place to gather, a place to
feel and to contemplate these significant historic
events.” The city’s UrbanArt Commission, along
with local landscape architect John Jackson of
JPA, Inc, and poet Steve Fox who wrote the text
etched in one of the plaza's stone sculptures, also
contributed to the project.
Bordering the plaza is a marble wall with the
names of the 1,300 sanitation workers who
participated in the 1968 strike. Inside the
dedicatory wall, on the pavement are the dates and
descriptions of significant events that led up to the
strike and took place during it. Doug McGowen,
the city’s chief operating officer said the space
will “surely be iconic for our city and for the
world.” “People will come from all over to hear
the story of what happened here,” he said. While,
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the site will
serve as a permanent place to “reflect on
Memphians who, quite literally changed the
world.”
/www.spiritmemphis.com