Vol. 1, Issue 2 FEBRUARY 2019 Advertise Your Business or Promote Your Event Free Calendar Listings and 20% OFF Your Ad through February 28, 2019 Thank you for subscribing to our first NEWSCENE publication. We are the NEW SCENE where NEWS is SEEN! We hope you enjoyed the stories about and the pictures taken at events we visited last month. We are looking forward to sharing more pictures and stories with you next month about the many events taking place this month. As you know, we can’t be at more than one event at a time, but we are here to assist you to get your events online, in our calendar, and in print. Don’t forget you can click on the links that are included to visit websites, blogs, Facebook pages and more! We want to be the first place you look to learn about the things happening in your community, but we won’t know about what’s happening unless you tell us. Write to us at Memphis.Meetings@gmail.com or call (901) 300-0250 to leave us a message. We promise to return your call in a timely fashion. NEWSCENE . . . ...is currently seeking ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS and passionate and outgoing volunteer photojournalists who can write stories and take pictures at local events. Interested persons should phone (901) 300-0250 for details. 36 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR By Yvonne D. Nelson, Ph.D. In celebration of Black History, and not just the month devoted to it, NEWSCENE will be featuring several article reprints and stories about some of Memphis’s residents from yesteryear throughout this, our February and second edition, as well as throughout the entire year. Always a concern of mine, this edition’s feature story was especially inspired by Mr. William Henry Reed, 92, a long-time Whitehaven resident, former Whitehaven Civic Club President, Mt. Joyner Baptist Church Deacon, and community advocate in and for Whitehaven. A brief history of Mr. Reed’s life is our featured article for this month. We hope that you will enjoy reading it and the rest of this edition and will encourage youth that all history is not in books, but, if they look hard enough and ask the right people, they may be able to find history in their own neighborhoods. As stated last month and repeated here, we depend on you, our readers to share this new publication with your family and friends, whoever they may be. We want stories of interest from all walks of life to enhance our pages each month. Of course all of this depends on you. Your readership, your ability to share online links to featured stories about you to create new viewers like yourself, your willingness to submit calendar events that are scheduled to happen as well as pictures and stories about things which have recently taken place, and your desire to support us through advertisements featuring local businesses and activities. Feel free to write me at I Love Shelby County, Attn: Senior Publicist, P.O. Box 9146, Memphis, TN 38190-0146, call me at 901-300-0250, or you can email me at Memphis.Meetings@gmail.com. I hope to hear from you soon! Thank you, Yvonne WILLIAM H. REED, A TRUE ‘BLACKHAVEN’ PIONEER KEEPING YOU UP-TO-DATE MONTHLY WITH THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN SHELBY COUNTY, TN Photo by Nat Valentine While visiting New York in December 1981, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (left), Whitehaven Resident, William Henry Reed (front right) and former NY 6th District, U.S. House of Representatives; former Wilberforce University President and Greater Allen African Methodist Episcopal Cathedral Sr. Pastor Floyd H. Flake (rear right) meet in his church offices in Jamaica, Queens, New York. This year, during Black History Month, NEWSCENE’s February edition is highlighting Mr. William Henry Reed of ‘Blackhaven.’ Annexed into the city of Memphis December 31, 1969, Whitehaven was originally a mostly all white suburb in Shelby County, TN. Forward to 2019, Whitehaven is now a practically all black portion of the most south-western part of the city of Memphis. Mr. Reed is the only person alive that I personally cannot do or say anything about using the word ‘Blackhaven’ when talking about Whitehaven. Here’s why: William Reed was named after his grandfather, who owned and sold some land on Whitehaven Lane to Middle Baptist Church. This land is where the church currently sits, on the first street developed in what has become known as the community of Whitehaven. William’s father, James Reed, married Theodora Shelton. To this union, three children were born. William H. Reed, the eldest and the subject of our story, his sister, Dorothy Reed Brownlee who is no longer with us, and a younger brother, James, who still lives in Memphis. Reed was an inquisitive child growing up. When he witnessed things that didn’t seem proper to Continued on Page 2
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