For fun, ask residents of Midtown Memphis where they last saw A C Wharton Jr.

“On the news,” some might say. “At a meeting,” others might answer.

But the most common replies would go something like this: “He was in line behind me at Starbucks.” Or “I saw him getting his groceries yesterday at Schnuck’s.”

Wharton sightings in the heart of the city are legion, emblematic of his high profile in the neighborhood he calls home. It is not difficult to spot the newly elected Memphis mayor, in between intense glances at his Blackberry PDA, grabbing a cup of coffee with the rest of us — or somewhat incongruously picking up a loaf of bread at the grocery store, the jacket of his three-piece suit often still buttoned at the end of a day.

In other large American cities, the frequency of such occurrences might itself be remarkable. With Wharton, observers say, there’s something more: an unflappable countenance and an always-on-the-clock willingness to engage everyone from the barista to the grocery bagger.

“If you convey a sense of greeting and welcome, that’s the way people will respond,” Wharton says in his downtown office during a lengthy, wide-ranging interview this fall. “What I see here in Memphis is, as a big city, far too many of us assume the worst of every person we speak to… as opposed to my daddy, who assumed the best of everybody.”

Agrees Tomeka Hart, a Memphis native and city school board member serving as a member of Wharton’s transition team: “You see him out in the community, wanting to be a part. His heart is so into it. He really wants to help make this… such a great city.”

So begins the Wharton era — the first change in Memphis leadership since 1992.

Wharton, who served as Shelby County’s first African-American mayor from 2002 to 2009, succeeded longtime Memphis city mayor W. W. Herenton on Oct. 26. Wharton’s ascension came in a commanding special-election victory held after Herenton announced he would vacate the seat, citing plans to seek congressional office in 2010. Shelby County commissioners recently appointed their peer Joe Ford to replace Wharton.

To many, it is hard to overstate what Wharton’s relentless work ethic, charisma and intricate grasp of public policy issues bode for the future of Memphis. Contrasting Wharton with past administrations is essentially irrelevant, they say. The point is the future — and Wharton and his admirers can’t stop talking about how much better the future can be.

“It’s like everything is teed up for him to provide the leadership and make it successful,” says Dexter Muller, the Greater Memphis Chamber’s senior vice president for community development. “We seem to have this feeling that we never measure up. Memphis has no reason to think of itself that way. I feel like we’re about to get over it.”

A lot sits before Wharton. On the short list: improving education, continuing the city’s aggressive fight against crime and working with organizations such as the Chamber to spearhead additional economic development.

“It’s not enough just to say ‘We’re a good place,’” Wharton says. “Everybody’s saying that. We’ve got to reach out and fight. We’ve got to pull and push. And I’m up to that.”

But to understand how Wharton will tackle it all, it’s helpful to first head to the grocery store with him. Not the Schnuck’s in Midtown, however. This grocery trip takes a three-and-a-half hour drive — and a trip back in time.

‘A basic sense of fairness’

Nashville can claim its country music, but far east of its gleaming skyscrapers in little Lebanon, Tenn., it’s just country, period. This is walking horse country, a place where a statue of a rifle-cradling soldier stands guard over a town square ringed with antique stores and the spot where the Cracker Barrel restaurants began. And it’s also the place where, in 1944, A C Wharton Jr. was born.

As Wharton and his driver ease down a gravel road at the Wilson County Fairgrounds, largely dormant this late into the year, WSM-AM (“Nashville’s Country Legend”) warbles from the dashboard. Wharton likes country music — a fact that, had it been revealed a few days before in his office, would have been unexpected to say the least. As the fairground gates swing open and Wharton scans the distance eagerly for a piece of his past, though, the music fits.

His shiny black government sedan stops down the road a bit from a piece of Wilson County history — and Wharton family history, too. Inside a kind of county fair vintage village, a place of meticulously arranged storefronts designed to cheerfully evoke bygone times, a gleaming sign is affixed to the façade of a simple country store. In bold letters, to the left of the door, it declares: WHARTON.

The store has been moved here a few miles from its original location. Wharton steps inside and begins looking at the old family photographs and the old-time products lining the shelves — pre-embargo Cuban cigars, flour, a laxative called “Black Draught.” A grocery store receipt mounted to the cash register, bears his own name as well as that of his deceased father.
“You notice there are no periods after the ‘A’ and ‘C’ because that was the actual name — it’s not an abbreviation — which was quite common around Wilson County,” he says.

Turning back to the grocery store, Wharton explains: “My dad had always wanted to own a business. So they bought (the store) across from the black high school. We’d keep it open late at night. There was an elderly gentleman who had a store across the street from us. We pretty well put him out of business. So my dad bought it.”

The Wharton children worked in the store alongside their mother and father. And it was here that Wharton says he received his first lessons not only in human nature and economics — but fairness as well.

“Everybody had a credit account,” he says. “Invariably, people would get credit and they wouldn’t pay you. But you know what? We never sued one of them. Each one of those people would end up sending other customers to us, or helping my dad in some way. It came back to you. Legally, we could have sued them. But morally, we would have been dead wrong.”

Wharton says this balance test — weighing agency against equity, power against powerlessness — shaped his early days as a criminal defense lawyer. (Wharton’s legal career preceded his relatively recent transition to political life, including stints as director of the legal aid clinic Memphis Area Legal Services, as Shelby County’s public defender, and time in private practice.)

“I never sued a client,” he says. “But some of my best cases came from clients who had absconded and didn’t pay me. So I believe in that natural sense of fairness. The way you treat people always comes back to you.”

A C Wharton Sr. did more than just run a grocery store; he raised and sold livestock, and was also, in the parlance of the time, a “jobber.”

“Let me give you an example,” the mayor says. “If you’re running a small restaurant, you cannot afford to buy a case of milkshake cups. Small businesses… would call him on Sundays at night and say, ‘We’re out of milkshake cups.’ My daddy… would go to Nashville, buy two or three cases. Then when you called, he would sell what you called a ‘sleeve’ ” — a smaller portion. “Of course,” he says, “there was a pretty good mark-up when you broke a case. And he did that with candy and everything.”

“I always noticed that when my dad had something to offer, the world just opened up,” Wharton says. “He always said, ‘You’ve always got to have something to sell.’ It didn’t hit me then what he was saying, but it has hit me now. This is America. You are judged on what you produce.”

‘She always placed a value in education’

In Memphis, it’s “mayor.” But at the family home in Lebanon, A C Wharton Jr. is known as “Brother.” Having finished showing his family store on this rainy autumn weekday, Wharton has driven about 10 minutes away to visit his 93-year-old mother Mary. She lives not far from where the original Wharton store once stood, and a few hundred yards from a gas station and convenience store still bearing the family name.

Sitting beneath pictures of her family, her mayoral son having strolled off to look at something in the backyard, Mary Wharton is asked to summarize A C’s childhood.

Smiling, she says: “He got more spankings than any of ‘em, but he had plenty of friends.”

Speaking generally of her children, she adds: “They always wanted to work. I tried to let them know (that), to have anything that they wanted, they’d have to work for it. You just want children to live (a) life they could be proud of. That’s what I tried to get in their heads all the time. Behave yourself and take care of yourself.”

After a few minutes inside the Wharton family home, the road that leads from Lebanon to a prominent legal and political career in Memphis seems a lot less foreordained. A triumph over codified racism and inequity, so distant from Wharton’s everyday demeanor, comes roaring into view. Like hearing WSM’s country ballads drift from the mayor’s car stereo, his climb from Lebanon to Tennessee State University to the University of Mississippi Law School suddenly takes on new dimension.

Referring to a simple struggle to buy high school band uniforms for her daughters, Mary Wharton recalls: “Then, they didn’t furnish black people a lot of things that’s furnished now. We had to work hard to get their little uniforms. We had to do it on our own.”

She continues, recalling a conversation about her children decades ago: “One of the richest ladies here in town told me I was crazy. She said, ‘Momma, how many young ones you got in college now?’ I said three. (She said), ‘You and A C (Sr.) must be crazy, sending all them young ones to school.’ I said, ‘If we get hungry or cold, they’ll just have to come home and suffer with us.’ That’s the way I left it. Yeah, it wasn’t easy. But we made it.”

After Wharton pops back into the house, his eyes catch a row of encyclopedias referenced in an earlier talk.

“We were the first family to have a set of Funk and Wagnall’s,” he says. “She had to buy them one volume at a time. And if you were a little late on paying for volume ‘F,’ they would hold up until they got (money) before you’d get ‘G.’ My mother never did have to set us down in the corner and say, ‘Read, read, read.’ It was by example, which stuck with me to this day.”
Nowadays, at nearby Cumberland University in Lebanon, an A C Wharton Family Scholarship exists to aid a Wilson County student majoring in business and in need of financial support.

This theme of transformation bears on both Wharton’s own personal journey and his plans for Memphis.

“I turned down judgeships, state Supreme Court judgeship, all that stuff,” he says later. “I would have been operating in the confines of the judicial system, which does not, as its role, (take) you as a poor person and (turn) you into middle-income. That wasn’t going to come about by way of lawsuits. You have to do that by way of legislation. If I wanted to impact social change on an economic front, (I would have to) move to another venue, which happened to be the political venue.

“My wife (Ruby) and I still feel that no election cycle should come around that we’re not involved. We have an obligation to lead by example, by getting out and getting involved, and not asking anything in return for your involvement.”

Wharton gives his mother a departing hug and soon his car is off to Nashville through the late-morning rain, trying to make an 11 a.m. meeting. 

‘That all starts from the top’

On Election Night in mid-October, Wharton strides to the stage at Midtown’s Minglewood Hall amid patriotic decorations and cheering supporters. His resounding victory, with more than 60 percent of the vote, has come after a campaign extolling themes of unity and progress — of a united future framed by the premise of a fast-fading divisiveness.

“It’s not about me, it’s about our city,” he says from the podium. “I can see the sun breaking through the clouds, and I can feel the light streaming down on this great city… and shining down on one Memphis.”

Weeks later in his first speech after taking the oath of office, Wharton speaks more pragmatically, hinting at plans to make City Hall more “customer-friendly,” bring a renewed transparency and efficiency in government and place an emphasis on civility and respectful debate.

Such highly individual and personal efforts, he tells a crowd gathered in City Hall’s rotunda, are tied directly to economic development that will drive the city forward.

“If we are to be a magnet for talent and industry, if we aspire to keep pace and surpass other cities that seem to have gone so far,” he said, “we all must demand better of ourselves, and we must reflect an optimism in our nature that speaks to the hope in the hearts of every citizen.”

It is here, at the nexus between conduct and commerce, where Wharton’s supporters center their optimism toward how Memphis can change.

“The focus on innovation... is renewed,” says Eric Matthews, co-founder of Mercury Technology Labs and Launch Memphis, a nonprofit organization in support of local entrepreneurship. “There is a new accessibility to the mayor’s office. I think it’s wonderful to see they have embraced the Facebook and Twitter era and are engaging with the community there. Because we’re seeing these types of changes occurring, I imagine and anticipate they will trickle into (asking): ‘How do we influence the economy?’ ”

Paul Morris, a Memphis attorney and city native who presides over the board of the legal services clinic Wharton once ran, agrees that the new mayor’s principles and reliability will serve as economic catalysts.

“The biggest thing that the business community is excited about is his customer-driven governance style,” he says. Wharton “offers a hand to (them) and says, ‘How can we work together?’ When they need an audience and partner in city government… they can count on him.”

At the Chamber, Dexter Muller agrees. Having worked over decades with several elected officials throughout Memphis and Shelby County, he ranks Wharton’s enthusiasm for economic development at the top. “When he hears something going on in business, he says ‘Set it up and I’ll go out and talk to them,’ ” Muller says.

Muller draws a contrast between the mayor’s other comparably hands-off tasks — overseeing a city agency such as the fire department, for instance — and the deeply complicated efforts of attracting businesses to the city.

“The mayor doesn’t need to be there when they’re putting out a fire,” he says. “With economic development, you do. The best thing he can deliver for his constituents is the opportunity to secure a job.”

He continues: “A willingness to travel to a corporate headquarters in Tokyo and Belgium is important. I see him as going on those trips. It really does make a difference when a mayor goes in those rooms.”

Meanwhile, businesses already in Memphis will receive “more of a sense of confidence that they’re in the right community,” Muller predicts.

“The community’s like a bucket. You’re putting new companies in the bucket, but if you have a hole in the bucket, you’re losing more and more. The easiest community to get to and communicate about an expansion is the one that’s already here. I see that as a big part of… what he will do.”

Muller hopes Wharton will also focus on education as a top priority of his administration. “There’s been a disconnect between the business community and education. Now you have a superintendent being a collaborator,” he says. Wharton “can be the glue that brings people together.”

Hart, of the city school board, agrees. She harbors little doubt that Wharton can deliver. At the same time, she cautions his rise to mayor does not signal a time for the community to relax or be passive.

“I’m excited, because he gets it on all levels,” she says. “The question is going to be: Are we going to support him? Because he’s not going to get there by himself.”

As for Wharton — quick to deflect praise during these nascent days of his administration — he in turn sees the community as its own best resource and strength.

“Certainly, we have challenges,” he says, sitting at his office conference table amid piles of papers, two buzzing Blackberrys and a litany of clocks. (He collects them.) “But for every challenge you show me, I will show you five or six… groups of goodwill (that) have rolled up their sleeves, put down their guard and said, ‘By George, we’re going to tackle this.’ ”

In a fell swoop, he connects the city’s most painful memory with his commitment to equality and social justice, and the promise of Memphis’s future.

“We know that, in the eyes of America, this is the place where Dr. King died,” Wharton says. “But we don’t wallow in the misery that flows from that. Instead, we go overboard to set up a Leadership Memphis, to set up an MPACT Memphis, to set up Urban League Young Professionals. We know we have to do that. That chip on our shoulder makes me wake up every morning and say, ‘Be on guard. Don’t let racism rear its head again — not from either side of the street.’ ”

“Memphis is about opportunity,” he says, growing animated. “We’re the big dog! We’re the biggest city in this region. We’re the capital of this region. And now, with the biotech and all that we’re going into, there are opportunities that abound.”

Looking ahead to 2010, “We’re going to be so much more innovative and aggressive when it comes to bringing businesses in here,” he says. “But we’re also going to be innovative and aggressive in keeping our talent here.

“If I trust you, even though I don’t know you, if I assume the best of you and I show it in the way I greet you, that’s the way you’re going to come back to me. And that all starts from the top, by example. Not by some creed written on a wall somewhere: ‘We are all friends, we dwell in harmony here…’ Those are words etched in stone.

“The best way to bring those hometown values to a big city is to lead by example. I find that it works just as well in Memphis as it does in my hometown of Lebanon.”

For questions or comments, email John Hubbell at jhubbell@memphischamber.com

To download the complete article, as viewed in Memphis Crossroads Magazine, click here.