Politico | How a Hollywood Director Built a Wall That Brings People Together
MEMPHIS—One day in April 2018, Demond Jackson wanted to see what everyone was talking about over on McLemore Avenue. Walking from his house, he crossed the parking lot behind the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, cutting between it and the The Soulsville Charter School. Five minutes later, he was facing a boxy brick building with the faces of Ida B. Wells and Mohandas Gandhi painted on it. Inside, it was bright and loud, with polygons of white, gray and blue walls, all studded with brightly colored hand-holds. The place was nearly the size of two football fields. There were kids he knew from the neighborhood, strapped into harnesses and clinging to the walls. He also saw something he didn’t often see in his part of South Memphis: white people.