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Many thanks to Chris Peck, Editor of The Commercial Appeal, for this editorial inspired by lunch with a group of Academy Fellows.

This editorial originally appeared in The Commercial Appeal on June 26, 2011. 

By Chris Peck

If you are young, black and politically inclined, one city stands out as a great place to build a career and make a difference.

That city? Memphis.

At least that's the view of the young, up-and-coming African-American professionals I met for lunch last week.

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''I know Memphis is the best city for me,'' said Rod Moses, director of the Fellows program for the Memphis Leadership Academy.

Why?

''Because Memphis is such a great opportunity, a place where you can come and make a difference,'' Moses explained.

''I meet a lot of people in my job and this is what they say all the time.

''The degree of separation is so small here. Either you or somebody you know has the mayor's cellphone number.

''And there are hundreds of organizations that are in desperate need of quality members who have business skills, expertise and community connections.''

Moses has the enviable job of finding and then nurturing young up-and-coming professionals through The Leadership Academy's 12-month leadership development class that connects emerging leaders with Memphis issues, Memphis businesses and Memphis politics.

He is an example himself of the striving, focused and talented African-American generation coming up behind the civil rights-era leaders who are still at the controls in many of the city's corner offices.

It's not that Moses or other young leaders don't have a reverence for what has gone before them in Memphis. The life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and his tragic death in Memphis, loom large in their minds.

But their world is different. Their expectations and aspirations are different. And they see their chance coming.

Moses points to one example of how a new generation of leadership is taking shape, largely under the radar. Recently 185 candidates applied for appointment to one of the 25 seats on a consolidated Memphis/Shelby County school board. At least 47 of the candidates had been through Leadership Academy training. Most were in their 40s or younger. Many were African-American.

This emerging class of next-generation African-American leaders is gaining in other places too:

-- Leadership Memphis. This is another outstanding training and development program that focuses on raising the level of college-educated Memphians by 1 percent a year.

-- Memphis Prep. This nonprofit effort connects outstanding kids from mostly inner-city schools with elite summer prep school programs. This often leads to acceptance for the Memphis kids into Ivy League or equivalent colleges.

These efforts, and more, are shaping a different kind of leadership for Memphis in the coming years.

DeMone Payne, a human resources staffer for AutoZone and a recent graduate of the Memphis Leadership Academy Fellows program, put it this way when asked what qualities are critical for future leaders in Memphis: Consistency. Accountability. Results. ''My business experience within AutoZone carries over to a sense of what leadership in the public sphere should entail,'' he said over lunch.

No talk about guaranteed lifetime jobs in city government. No endorsement of the idea that government should be an employer of last resort for those who can't find work elsewhere.

This emerging African-American generation of leaders isn't wholly visible yet. Many of the younger men and women who one day may be on the ballot for mayor, school board or City Council seats today are working their way up in their careers and raising young families. And the public sector isn't all that appealing to them at the moment, when budgets are being cut and old rifts between urban and suburban Memphis, or black and white Memphis, keep opening up.

But they know change is coming. The top leadership positions at Memphis City Hall, in Memphis City Schools and among many of the leading churches and businesses are held mostly by men in their 50s and 60s.

A new guard is rapidly taking place in the midlevel ranks of city and county governments, Methodist and Baptist hospitals, and businesses like FedEx and Medtronic.

Will there not also be young white leaders who emerge in Memphis? Of course.

But demographics will continue to be an important issue in how the city chooses and responds to its leaders.

We saw an example of this just days ago. When white Memphis City Councilman Kemp Conrad suggested that the time might be here to privatize the city's sanitation operations and also give a buyout to the most senior of the sanitation workers, he was roundly criticized for being insensitive to the legacy of Dr. King. His proposal didn't go anywhere.

Yet when African-American City Councilwoman Janis Fullilove made a very similar proposal for a voluntary buyout of sanitation workers as a way to reduce staffing, her effort was hailed as a fine example of doing right.

Fair enough. Her idea is worthy. So was Conrad's.

A reality of Memphis civic life is that good ideas often gain currency more quickly in this majority-black city when those ideas are initiated and endorsed by visionary and effective black leaders.

The good news for Memphis is that the seeds of this next generation of leadership already are planted.