Chapter 7: Sweet validation sows discord within activist ranks

Late-morning the day after the ULI presentation, my parents showed up with 10 copies of the newspaper. In big bold letters it read: "Coliseum Shake-up," and there was a picture of Lipscomb and me at the Peabody lectern, his hand on my shoulder and me with a very resolute, determined look on my face. Top story. A1 above the fold. Above the photo was a pull quote from me "Today was nothing short of a watershed day for Memphis." My parents were beaming with pride… their boy had made the paper before, but never like this.

The ULI reveal had been a major success… bigger than I realized in the moment… and it came on the heels of the huge, diverse crowd we'd drawn to Roundhouse Revival. Both had helped to really put the Coliseum Coalition on the map.

But our success created jealousy from some people who didn't like how quickly we'd risen… people who didn't appreciate our DIY, punk rock, MacGuyver approach. The very people who, early on, I had hoped would take up the mantle… the ones who instead let us lead... now wanted to second-guess our approach. Chief among them was Sally. Not only was she a preeminent preservationist voice in town at the time, she had a decades-old relationship with Lipscomb. We found out later on that the two of them had an agreement. Lipscomb promised to preserve the Creative Arts Building, known also as the "Women's Building," and in exchange, Sally promised not to fight him on the Coliseum. No wonder her support for our cause never came. She never outright disagreed with us, but she was always too busy. Now we knew why. She'd cut a deal. But now we had broken through and changed the narrative.

One day, Lipscomb and I were set to have a check-in phone call, and he asked Sally to join the call. Fine by me, but I was a bit perplexed, since she had not been involved at all up to that point. I don't remember exactly what we talked about, but I remember how deferential she was to Lipscomb and how deferential he was to her. It was a bit of a generational thing. They'd been through many wars… had seen a lot come and go. It was like they wanted to give me a broader context, and it was clear they were both trying to get me… to get us… to run plays through Sally as others had before. Lipscomb wanted his deal honored, but we'd unknowingly marched right past old assurances, reset the boundaries and rewritten the rules.

I'm wired as a consensus builder, so I was open to adding Sally to our coalition, even if she was late to the party. I realized that there was still equity in her brand that could help us. How to get her vocal support without ceding control became the struggle.

First, she wanted us to grow our board and follow a certain rhythm of meetings more in line with how she normally operated. I was open to considering this, but my nice-guy desire to be accommodating was at odds with the uneasiness and distrust that Mike, Roy and Jordan felt.

Why dilute our strength? Why change what's working?

They had a point.

Where was Sally and her crew when we'd asked for their help in the first place? Now they wanted to lecture us on how to do things, when we had used new tactics to break through and do what we were told was impossible… what we were told we were fools to even attempt?! No thank you!

We got so far as to vote in an expanded slate of board members, but there was almost immediate in-fighting. Within a week the newbies had resigned. The ones within that grouping who we needed to continue working with, we resumed our ad-hoc way of pulling them in as needed. We mended fences where we could. A couple of them completely understood. Over time, we worked through any hurt feelings with all of them, although we would tussle with Sally again the following year. She is not the force she once was now anyway. The long "cold war" with her is largely irrelevant now.

A key advantage Champions gain in playing the long game is that it gives people time to change their minds… about your ideas and what they think of you. For those too proud to ever admit they were wrong, you just outlast them. Time affords that, too.